The Frustrating Inevitabilities of Football Manager

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frustrated angry football fans in stadium silhouette people watching

In football and life, sometimes you can predict exactly what will happen before it happens. It’s like having a crystal ball but without having any otherworldly powers.

Those rules apply to FM, too, as there are certainties in the game that always seem to happen. Here are just some of them:

Your former player always scores against you

I am afraid this is an inevitability. If you come up against one of your old players, they always score. There are three certainties in life: tax, death, and your old player scoring against you in FM.

Also, the player is usually a player who struggled to score for you. I once had a striker who failed to score in 18 games for me, but then, when I sold him in the January transfer window, he scored a hat-trick the first time we faced him. It must have been my poor man-management that led to his uselessness!

VAR will check nearly every goal

Some people will say that this happens in real life. However, I would say it happens far more often in FM than in real life. In fact, I have played games where three goals have been disallowed because of VAR checks.

var check

In FM25, I hope the frequency of goals disallowed due to VAR is less, as it can drive you insane. The worst ones are when you think your team has scored a last-minute equaliser or winner, and VAR rules it out. Once again, I know it happens in real life, but it is just so frustrating.

A player ending a long goalless streak against you

Maybe this is just me, but this is another frustrating aspect of FM. You are playing against a team, and when they score, it says it is the player’s first goal of the season.

Often, the player is your opponent’s 17-year-old tenth-choice left-back, who never features again and retires from football without achieving much.

As previously mentioned, this phenomenon is often combined with the old law of the ex, with your former player ending his 300-game goal draught.

Clubs wanting unrealistic fees for their players

This one is the bane of many people’s FM saves. You spot a player, and you will put in a bid. His value seems reasonable, but then the AI club demands £100m for a player worth £25m.

I know this is probably because the club doesn’t want to sell their player, so they put a premium on their head. I suppose it’s like the real-life situation with Manchester United trying to sign Everton centre-back Jarrad Branthwaite.

Reportedly, the Toffees wanted around £70m for the England starlet, as they didn’t want to sell one of their best players. United were not prepared to meet that fee, so Everton held on to Branthwaite, and United signed a different player, French youngster Leny Yoro.

However, that seems to be taken to the next level in FM. Sorry, I am starting to sound like Manchester United shareholder Sir Ratcliffe. I don’t want to throw my toys out of my pram.

You can’t sell your players

This is tied into the above. Sometimes, selling your players seems impossible, even if they are good players. If you can sell them, the AI gives you peanuts rather than anything close to their value.

Clubs will offer you small fees, and then if your player is on a high wage, they even want you to contribute to their wages, too. It has me tearing what’s left of my hair out at times.

The most common scenario is that I have to loan the player out with either an option to buy or a mandatory fee, whilst often, the other team doesn’t even cover the player’s wages. If he is on big wages, then the buying club wants to cut the fee down due to any wages they are paying the player during the loan spell.

Players won’t square the ball

This is one of my pet hates about FM. No matter how good the player is, they seem to shoot from impossible angles when there is usually a player better placed in a far better position.

I am sure other people have come across this problem in the past. It can’t just be me with a dodgy glitch version of the game.

Will these things change in FM25?

fm25

With a new UI and system being introduced for FM25, some of these issues will undoubtedly change.  However, some of these issues are less the creator’s fault and more things that seem to frustrate and annoy me as a player.

Some of the things discussed are what make the game realistic, so it would be wrong for Sports Interactive to remove them from the game, even if they do send me insane at times.

What is the biggest FM inevitability that frustrates you?