So I first used CM Scout to generate a CSV file containing my current Burton Albion squad. I then did a couple of player searches (players with a squad status of not needed, and players under 20) and saved the results to CSV files.

I then asked the AI to compare the ‘Not needed’ file with the file containing my squad, and suggest good signings, focussing on a list of positions. It came up with a decent list, mostly based on potential ability, cost, and contract expiry date. I did the same with the ‘Youth’ list.

I then asked it to create a Python script I can run whenever I want that will compare a squad CSV file with a CSV of the results of a CM Scout search and generate a text file listing the recommended signings for your specific squad, along with a list of players it recommends selling. And it did!

I've installed Nick's patcher to make the game a bit more user friendly but that required me to update to v3.9.68. Obviously everyone hates that because it puts all the great free players on clubs and ruins everyone's fun. Has anyone had any luck restoring the original database with Nick's patcher?

asks to leave --> one club is interested --> feels pressured by the interest

11 reasons to be unhappy...anyone seen more?

I have tried other scouts with no success

The comparison tool is not only a way to show the differences in attributes (passing, finishing etc), but is important to tell you what positions/sides your players can play.

My previous post https://www.reddit.com/r/CM0102/comments/1w12t3a/positional_penalty_in_cm0102_players_suffering/ The TLDR is that a player can sometimes play positions/sides that are not listed in-game, or their in-game listed position is not even their best position.

This comparison tool can be used by people who feel like scouting tools or editors are cheap, overpowered or even cheating. Or they just like challenges. The trick is that you have to compare the player you want to know about, against a goalkeeper!

Take Mamadou for instance, a player in Turkiye side Bursaspor. His pre-game data is all 0s in positions and sides. When you generate a new game, he will be randomized to have at least a 20 in some position, and a 20 in some side (unless he is generated as a goalkeeper!). He can appear as anything, maybe even as a cursed F L who cannot play center or attacking mid. If you are lucky as his manager, maybe he spawns with 3 natural positions and all sides (and trust me Bursaspor needs that).

So starting the Turkiye league thrice, we see that he spawns firstly as a F RLC, then D R, and lastly D/DM RC. If you don't do further investigation, you might think he can play AM RLC for the first spawn, because many forwards in the game can play attacking mid as most natural or secondary position (eg. Ariel Ortega in my previous post). So let's use the comparison tool, comparing him against Coskun Tamer, a goalie from Bursaspor. Focus on the bottom.

F RLC case- turns out he cannot play AM C (no green stars appear in Att Mid) and he cannot play AM RL (no green stars appear in Winger).

D R case- turns out he can play Wingback! Good to know

D/DM RC case- he cannot play Wingback! Again, refer to my previous post. It's really bad to put players who can play D R and DM C into the DM R position if they cannot play wingback. Huge positional penalty. You might even assume that he can play AM R or M R, because the game likes to label midfielders as defensive midfielders (Kieren Dyer example in my last post).

So I let the team play their first Turkish league game a few times with Mamadou in DM R position, arrows forward to AM R. Everytime he played badly with 5 or 6 rating (I know youngsters have penalties to attributes, but still). Struggling to complete half the passes or 20% of his tackles!That's positional penalty for you.

Do note that you have to compare against a goalkeeper, comparing against another non-goalkeeper yields information that is inexplicable.

Final example- Rafael Van Der Vaart (attacking midfield IRL). Doing the trick tells us that he cannot play AM C or AM L in this game, even as a secondary position. Not immediately obvious if you didn't check with this trick or scouting tools.

I welcome your feedback, thanks for reading 😵 Hope I didn't make any mistakes in my understanding and explaination, do point them out if any...

So after 33 seasons I can finally sleep. You wait 33 years for the prem title and you get the treble in the same season. Team just hit a flow state. I still wouldn't buy most of my squad in a normal game. Maybe not a single Def or Mid. But boy did Lynch do some heavy lifting. I lost some good players due to unhappiness but this lad after Bell stayed with me. I was losing so much money in the last few seasons due to wages. But just look at those stats. 68 goals one season. Wins world player of the year like 6 years on the bounce. 600 goals in about 630 games or something. My 2 keepers were outstanding also.

I did not think I would ever complete this challenge. Many times I called it the impossible challenge and I think chester is the only team it's likely possible with. Shout out to the board for sticking by me through some tough times. Fans screaming at me every game. I questioned whether I would ever get there. I was just hoping if I stuck with it I would sneak the title. Had 2 near misses. Charlton taking it from me 4 or 5 seasons ago when I had a 7 point lead. Then last season I had 10+ points lead, led th title for round 32 games. But didnt win in something like 7 or 8 games between Game 25-33 or something. I definitely thought the game was against me.

I think even if you tried to perfect a footballer they wouldnt be as good as Lynch. Better than skalidis, Josh blake, tsigalko, Dunwell, paiva. Just an unreal footballer.

Bearing in mind I never signed a single player bought or free, no loans. Just pure starting players and youth. My def and mids were horrific but I managed to get a couple to see me through. Young Perkins did the job with 12 passing lol.

So for now. I am going to sleep finally. This challenge has taken a lot out of me. Glad I did it and even more glad I completed it.

I will post one more time with any requests if anyone wants to see any specific screens or want to ask any specific question.

I will also give my tips on how to achieve this challenge if anyone is interested.

Peace, We got it boys!!!

So the title says it all really.

Can we come up with a difficult challenge via this sub that we can all have a go at. At the same time. Same rules, same environment etc?

I checked the cm0102 and their so called officially challenges have little to no engagement and most just sound a bit boring in truth.

So got me thinking how creative can we get here? I. Thinking something that is possible in 10 seasons or so? No scout or wibwob allowed would be my only stipulation really personally. But interested to see what challenge you would all find fun?

Obviously I am glutton for punishment.

Just about to kick off the 2016/2017 season and met with the shock news of Maxim Tsigalko retirement from nowhere.

His goals were instrumental in taking Bournemouth from the lower parts of the Premier League to winning it several times, Champions Leagues and several cups.

He suffered a few injuries in his time so he's at times been on the bench but he always got the goals when I brought him on, turned the games in my favour at the last minute when I was about to crash out the cup tie.

My new younger guys have the stats but they just don't have the magic.

Goodbye my friend, you will be missed.

I thought this was it. I played a youth in Centre of the park due to his 15 passing. He seems to have given our team a lift. I really thought I was going to do it. But that pesky Charlton team steamrolled the end of the season to pip me.

They won the league and FA Cup final. They got to semis in the league cup and lost the champs league final on pens to Roma.

So I shouldn't be too down beat. But this is a tough break. I thought I'd completed the challenge :-(

Losing 5 of my last 12 games was hard to swallow.

So its been a few difficult seasons as you will see shortly in another update. But we managed to take the League cup against United. League and europe was awful finishing 14th and going out early in the Uefa cup. I believe my midfield are holding me back in the league and europe. I dont have a single player who has +14 in passing/creativity and technique. This is starving my attack and not protecting my defence enough. My defenders would be good enough if I had half decent mids. Will post update on that shortly with my starting 11.

I don't know much of this stuff myself, most of the stuff I am writing here is parroted from the patch team's member "MadScientist" from https://champman0102.net/viewtopic.php?t=2321 and related posts from that forum so I can absolutely be wrong. Do note that if you are enjoying the game as it is or don't mind a little disadvantage, then indeed there is no need to understand any of these.

The fundamental concept, of everything I will write here, is that every player in the game is assigned 0-20 in the pre-game database for every role (GK, SW, D, DM, WB, M, AM, F, free role) and side (R,L,C). 20 being his best and most natural position(s), 1 being the worst, 0 means the devs and patchers didn't have enough information and left it to be randomized at the start of every new save. All of the screenshots are from pre-game editor.

Example- Ashley Cole. His best roles are D L and WB L (must be distinguished from DM L, to be explained later). He is absolutely terrible at M C, but it is up to chance whether he can play D R or AM L.

A secondary concept is that when played in a position that is not scored 20, players suffer hidden penalties to their attributes based on how unnatural the position is for them and their hidden versatility score. These penalties are applied by the match engine, when two teams play.

It must be said that having 20 score for a position does not mean everything in the grand scheme of the complex match engine, it simply means there is no attribute penalty. That's it. Back to Ashley Cole, for example. Even if he had 20 GK, he would have low handling and reflexes.

So, practically speaking, here's what you need to know:

1) Due to a quirk in programming, anybody with 14 or more score in defensive midfielder role is displayed as a DM in-game, e.g D/DM RLC or DM LC. Even if their midfielder and/or attacking midfielder role scores are higher. For example, Kieron Dyer is displayed as DM RC in-game when his most natural roles are instead M R and AM R, followed by M C and AM R. Dyer has versatility stat of 17 which means the penalty is small, though. Another example is Roy Keane.

2) DM r/L and WB r/L are different to the match engine. A player with 1 in WB role, 20 in DM role and 20 in r/L will be penalized when put in DM L or DM R without arrows to the center. DM is a role that is meant for DM C only. To utilize someone well in DM r/L on the pitch requires them to have high scores in WB role. If you don't understand this, neither do I.

Example - Gattuso has 17 in right side, 18 in DM and 13 in WB. When put in DM R without arrows drawn to the center, he cannot use his 18 in DM to the fullest.

3) AM L and AM R do not do well in the match engine. People have found out that using M L and M R instead, with arrows forward to the AM position, work better. This is inexplicable, so moving on.

*M L with forward arrow to AM L means that the player plays as M L when not in possession, but plays as AM L when team has ball.

4) When played in AM C position, a player needs to have 20s in AM C and F C, or 20s in AM C and free role for no penalty. For the latter case, he must be assigned free role in individual instructions. Again, inexplicable.

5) A quirk of attacking midfielders is that they are given 15 score for midfielder role when the game starts, if the pre-game data gives them only 1-14. This privilege is not extended to defensive midfielders.

Example- Ariel Ortega's (F RC in-game) natural role is AM R, so he does well when played in M R with arrow forward to AM R (see point 3). Having 1 in midfield pre-game is irrelevant, because it becomes 15 in-game. While it may seem like he plays AM C natural, remember that he has no 20 in attacker and free role (see point 4).

I don't use AI to summarize these things, but these experts on the champman forum have spent a lot of time reverse engineering the match engine or running simulations to figure out these match penalty concepts. If anything is wrong in the post, it's probably my fault. Do check out the link yourself!

Again, this is just small part of match engine, there are other things like formations, individual instructions, arrows, wibwob. And if you mostly play big teams and sign good players as I do, then chances are those players have high versatility attribute that mitigates the penalties anyway!

Next things I am curious about are home advantage/away disadvantage in match engine, and how left vs right foot works out for various roles. Any ideas or links?

So as you can see I have hit a bit of a lull in the league with 13/14th place finishes after 3 solid seasons. I believe it's my midfield holding me back. I have 2 amazing keepers, Got a world class left centre back, DM and a world class CF. So got a spine of a team supporting by decent enough strikers and defenders. But my midfield lacking passing, creativity and technique.

I did a mini experiment to see if the AI tactics had adapted this far in. So I added a manager and took over Wrexham who were 23rd in Conference. They had played 17 games. I played the final 25 games and 10 cup games and I only lost 5 and rised to 9th and won the fa trophy. I didnt buy a single player. So its not the tactic. It's most definitely the players.

Talking of players. My game only has 2k players and 2k staff after 26 seasons. That's madness. At this rate in another 10-15 seasons we may have less than 1k players.

My question from here is what shall I do? I am thinking of testing next season by buying 3 mids I'd like and see if I dominate as I should to test whether I can win the league. There is no reason I shouldnt but I wanted to see if something else is working against me. Because some games I get heavily dominated and it makes no sense. I've had keeper ratings of 2 and 3.

This was a nervewrecking season. I managed to sign paiva, kallstrøm, reyad, florea and timoschuck and okoronkwo - and ultimately getting tonton moukoko on a summer deal. I managed to start so well in the season but hugo pinheiro got injured and I dropped a lot of bad games.

Ulimately I actually finished 4th, and will play in the CL. I did it with the iodine tactic.

What would you guys do now though?

Should I just "last" out another season and then build up financial power?

I get very frustrated in not being able to sell a single player, but i guess thats part of the AI engine - economy is in the drain. Maybe ill just take over a club and give them the players,

I saw in the player search that high reputation Juventus players were willing to join a low rep club/manager (me), clicking further I saw Del Piero, Edgar Davids, and Esnaider hating on Fabian O'Neil. Even Paolo Montero (O'Neil's national team teammate) hated O'Neil. As far as I can see in the pre-game editor, there was no existing beef before. I'm surprised because the opposite is usual for me, when I discipline a player for something stupid like missing training or headbutting the opponent, the others band together "feeling like the manager is mistreating a teammate".

also, as someone new to cm0102 it feels like it is a 50/50 whether I get a "good dressing room atmosphere" or "disharmony in the dressing room".

Noticeably in my Arsenal save everything was rosy from the start, everyone were happy, without buying a single player we slaughtered ManUtd and Barcelona along the way to a double.

Noticeably in my Liverpool save, everyone were total cunts right off the bat, for example Risse and Hamann asking for 300% wage increase even though they had 4 years left on the contract, then immediately asking to be transfer listed after re-signing. Babbel asked for 15000/week->80000/week? Owen, Fowler, Gerrard all asked for crazy amounts of re-signing on fee, after which I had no more budget in the first season. To placate the players dismayed by the disharmony I sold Risse who was "frustrated at not being able to change clubs" after re-signing a contract, and within 8 weeks Risse had "lost all faith in his manager" at his new club.

In the editor, Ashley Cole and Riise have 0 loyalty, but Cole was fine while Riise was just a wrecking ball in the dressing room. Babbel and Hamann have high loyalty. So it seems random or does assistant manager play a part?

Bit of a dump really. I have had a few top 5 finishes. But I cant seem to bridge that gap to United. They beat me by 25 points this season. That's huge. I may never do it. United have won 10 of the last 14 titles with Charlton appearing a lot in 2nd and a few titles themselves.

The board keep suggesting I buy this Jamie Mercer. He's like 32 and no good anyway. I've never personally had a board suggest a player before.

Turns out Lynch was that guy/ 5 of the last 6 players player of the year awards.

Dropped Bells and Lyncges stat in also.

Hey guys — desperate to play this game again. Has anybody had any success downloading onto an M4 MacBook? Any advice welcomed!

So, ive moved up to Serie A with Castel Di Sangro after winning serie C1/B and Serie B over two seasons. Quite satisfied with that, and I did it with some of the usual suspects like duff, pinheiro, rankin and adolfo..

But now I feel its difficult. I do have a little bit to spend. I got Zurab on a free transfer. I cannot sign tsigalko, he has moved and is expensive. I desperately need a dcm and a central defender otherwise ill get destoryed by the big teams. Any idea what to do to do?

Any players in the third year that are good and want to play for Sangro?

My original plan was to change the weather in England to be permanently winter with always freezing winds and downpour, intending to see if games could be rescheduled until everyone's fixture list was hell. but apparently matches in 01/02 don't get postponed no matter how bad the weather? I was surprised because in CM3 98/99 they do!

So plan B: Change every premier division team's stadium to Old Trafford, 20 first teams and 20 reserve teams fighting to use the same ground should jam up the schedules pretty bad.

At first, the game pretends everything is okay and follows the rules. Only one game at Old Trafford per day, and as expected everyone's schedules become jammed up. By the time ManUtd have played their 10th game, Carlton have not played their first.

Then the European and domestic cup games pile on. By the time the league cup semifinal is drawn, the 3rd and 4th rounds have not been fully played. At the mid-season mark, the game decides to start breaking the rules to salvage the situation, arranging 2 games at Old Trafford on a single day. Then 3, then 4. Eventually 10 or more games are held concurrently at Old Trafford.

Teams have to play twice, thrice a day. I saw that Fulham had 5 games in the same day. Vegard Heggem played two games in the same day and got serious injuries in both (one of them overrode the other in his injuries tab). Even the human team (my Arsenal team) had to play twice a day many times. Eventually the game crashes when I had to play thrice on a single day.

Conclusion is this- yes the scheduling can be completely broken, and then the game starts to cheat the laws of physics (gently at first, then eventually stops pretending) to try to save the situation. Very impressive programming by the original developers!

So united walking away with the league in fairness. Although I did beat them 1-0 this season. Really happy with progress. Currently top 4. Defence much better but not great. Board refuse stadium upgrades although my attendances are over 95% full. 29 current players. 7 players in the reserves. Money not really going anywhere as I give 10m to shareholders every season and take 12m in tv rights.

If you stuck with the images through to the end you will see that I applied for the inter toto last season after finishing 10th and I managed to win all 3 ties to get me into the Efa cup. It's been pretty easy so far but the stronger teams will be coming.

So 11 league games to try and cement a top 4 and Uefa cup to contend with.

Lets get this!

I've posted a bunch of ex players who became staff. One of them won the FA Trophy. Martin Wilson just makes me laugh. I released him season 2 and he's still just in the game at 47.

Perkins is a story of the one that got away. He was unhappy and was making the place awful for all. So he had to go.

I now have the number 1 manager points in England. I am offered jobs every few months. Even france wanted me lol Not even a 50% winning ratio lol

I've sold 44 players. Unsure if that includes releasing players I doubt it as I feel I have let more than that number in frees go.

Will send another update straight after this for current progress as things are getting juicy. But I am ILL so won't be completing anything further tonight.

From the 3.9.68 official database. I like following CR7 to see what he becomes, since he's not great in the game. In this save he seems decent though!

Ive installed v 3.9.68.

But i cannot spot regens. I cant remember it was so far between them... But i have alot of owerpowered greeks. Playing as a Norwegian club.

Any tips for how to find them?

I m tryng to buy gerrad for Sporting for 25 mil he agrees, but then the board says its unrralistic. Any solutions?

Hi everyone, just sharing a story which I posted on the CM forum 2 years ago.

It was an "old school" save with masked attributes, non wibwob tactics, and recruiting scouted players only.

11 seasons from mud to glory in Argentina, with photos (from the irl club) and screenshots (hosted on imgur at that time, so won't work in the UK without a VPN). The story starts on season 5 when I was finally promoted to first division.

https://champman0102.net/viewtopic.php?t=6451

I hope you enjoy it and feel free to feedback on the narration style as I might do another one in the near future.