Football Manager 2024 players are concerned about their footballers’ attributes “not mattering enough,” as some have flagged that they can assign roles to people that shouldn’t fit them whatsoever, yet achieve surprisingly positive results.
Over on Football Manager 2024’s official feedback thread, on developer Sports Interactive’s community forums, user whatsupdoc shared that they’d experimented with putting their 17-year-old back-up goalkeeper, Tommy Setford, into the advanced forward position for a couple of games on their new Fulham save. They described what they found as an “example of attributes not mattering enough.”
They alleged that in the first league cup game, their team won 5-0, with Setford scoring and finishing on a rating of 7.6. Seemingly, this wasn’t a fluke, as despite the player’s team losing the next game, Setford still scored and was given a 7.1 rating, before going on to score again for a third game running. Needless to say, no one would really expect a goalkeeper to perform so well as a striker.
This has caused heated discussion on the forum over the current state of the management sim. Another player, dannyo666, wrote: “It seems only physical and mental matter in 24. I put [William] Saliba [a central defender] up front for a season, he got 15 goals, he looked like a world class poacher. [...] I really don't know where this series is going,” dannyo666 wrote.
“I don't know why this happens but it's been happening for a little while,” RDF Tactics commented. “Last year, Héctor Bellerin [a right defender and right wing back] was my top scorer as [advanced forward] at Barca due to [Robert] Lewandowski dropping form. I got frustrated and to prove a point on stream, we threw Héctor Bellerin up front as [an] AF and he couldn't miss. But it [wasn’t] the fact he was scoring goals, it was the type of goals. Long shots, headers etc.”
“[What the f**k]! This is a joke. Makes the game a joke,” SimonHoddle added, questioning which factors do actually matter when it comes to determining the football players’ performance.
“I’ve always defended [Sports Interactive] and said this game (for all its faults) isn’t scripted and is an incredibly well built and believable reconstruction of football. Turns out I was wrong and it’s utter [bulls**t]. [...] SI really need to address this and explain why the above example of a kid [goalkeeper] is happening,” they continued.
TRG has reached out to Football Manager publisher SEGA for comment on the situation, and we will update this story if we receive a response.
For more games like Football Manager, be sure to check out our recommendations for the best strategy games, as well as the best PC games.
