FM 2023 - Quality of Life

[Mihai]

Squad Building

We know that for lots of you, building your squad is one of the most important and exciting elements of your Football Manager save. In addition to the big Recruitment revamp introduced this year, we’ve made a few other tweaks to help you.

Trying players before you buy has been made easier with more clear information about trialists now provided direct to your inbox. When they first arrive, you’ll get a news item indicating their Current and Potential Ability, their projected wage demands and the upcoming fixtures they’re available for. You’ll no longer need to delve into their player profile to see your coaches’ assessments when their trial ends, as recommendations will be sent direct to your inbox, alongside an indication of how the player compares with other options in your squad.

Should you notice that a player has a ‘Lst’ or ‘Req’ label next to their name, you’ll now be able to see their valuation by just hovering over the label in a tooltip. I love a tooltip, me.

A similar visibility change has been made when you receive multiple offers for one of your players. In the past, you’d have to view each deal individually to determine whether they were negotiable or not. Now, a locked icon will appear in the relevant inbox items to make it clearer where you’ve got wiggle room.

There are also improved transfer AI decisions across the game, including more sensible decisions from the AI when in administration.

To show the attention to detail which is so important to what we do, we’ve amended Work Permit rules in Scotland. Unlike in England, players can be granted permits to play in Scotland on appeal if it is determined that they’re good enough “to contribute effectively to the development of the game at the top level in Scotland”.

Developing Young Talents

A huge part of Football Manager is developing young players and we hope that a couple of changes we’ve introduced will help with your careers in FM23.

A feature that many have been calling for on our forums, all user-controlled Under-18 and Under-23 teams can now receive invites to active youth leagues, even if those teams have been created after your save game began.

Additionally, we’ve made it easier for you to see how your youth sides are performing. Within the Development Centre, you’ll see a dropdown menu for each active age-grade team at your club. At the bottom of this is a ‘Competitions’ option, which, just like the Competitions page for the senior team, will show you the current leagues they’re playing in and where they stand in the table.

As always, we’ve done more work to improve newgen generation and balance the game world for those who, like me, enjoy playing with long-term saves.

Matchdays

Clubs rotating their teams for cup games, particularly in the earlier rounds, has become increasingly prominent in recent years even away from the biggest clubs. That’s reflected in FM23, with pre-cup game news items now showing more contextual advice from your Assistant Manager on who you should rest for that game, who you should pick to fulfil any promises or squad status obligations and any youth players that they think would benefit from a runout.

When you get to certain matches, you’ll notice a recent change from football’s lawmakers has been introduced. If you’re taking charge of a Club Friendly, International Friendly or a World Cup game, you’ll now be allowed to name 15 substitutes; we’ve even gone as far as adjusting the dugouts to ensure that all the subs can fit in.

If you’re anything like me, you’re often tempted to learn more about players who’ve just scored against you. We’ve now made that easier, with clickable hyperlinks added to match incident flash cards for substitutions, bookings, red cards, and goals.

Talking of substitutes, body language has now been added for substitutes to help you choose who to bring on – and allow you to see the body language of those who’ve been subbed off.

Leagues and Competitions

Complying with squad registration rules is something that often catches people out, both in real-life and in FM. We’ve moved to address that this year, giving you the ability to check if you’re compliant before the registration period opens. Particularly useful in leagues with salary caps or nationality restrictions, you’ll be able to view registration more clearly through both Staff Meetings and related inbox items.

For those leagues where there are reward and punishment rules about minutes given to youth players, we’ve made it easier to track your progress. News items will now show how you’re getting on, allowing you to make tweaks if needed as the season progresses.

Managers taking charge in the Canadian Premier League will notice a big change this year as we’ve factored in the league’s draft for the first time. With the CPL continuing to further establish itself on the world stage, you’ll now be able to bring through young talent in the way real-life sides do.

Of course, the attention to detail is always there, so you’ll find new rules added and rule changes made across pretty much every league in the game. To give some examples – we’ve ensured that Norwegian league loan rules are accurate and that if a club in China is relegated from the top-flight the correct wage cap rules are followed. As always, there are hundreds of these kinds of changes, so the internet isn’t big enough for me to list them all!

Miscellaneous

Elsewhere, you’ll notice several new questions in press conferences and message options in team talks. These are all more contextual, touching on topics such as VAR decisions, previous play-off campaigns and the permutations involved in you potentially winning league titles on the last day of the season.

As you progress through the game, you’ll also notice tweaks to manager environments. We’ve added some new props and changed the rooms your meetings take place in. We won’t spoil them for you though, we’ll let you find them yourself when you load up FM23…

For those who are colour blind, we now have three different colour blind modes, covering those with Protanopia, Deuteranopia and Tritanopia, available. You’ll find these in the accessibility section of the Preferences menu.

Achievements have been completely revamped – there are both new and different things to achieve, as well as shiny new icons.

You’ll notice lots of new information around FM23 – such as reasons for loan extensions in the loan report, or why managers have been sacked or changed jobs in the manager’s milestones section.

There’s a new option to buy out the ‘percentage of next sale’ clauses for players you’ve bought, should the other team be happy to do that.

There are also loads of little user interface adjustments to help you do things quicker, such as the ability to change the frequency of analyst reports in news items.

Of course, that’s not all. We like you to find things out for yourself while you are playing and there are lots of treats for you to discover.

I hope you enjoy your journey with FM23 when it’s released on November 8th. We look forward to hearing and reading the stories you create.