It took many years but the Football Manager 2024 brought us the new, or maybe better worded, revamped system of how we can set the set pieces. It would be wrong to say it’s completely new because some things didn’t change but I will mention it later in this post.

I wanted to post a couple of things I like but also a couple of things I don’t like (and in the case of some of them I don’t understand why it is like this). So, there are my pros and cons of the revamped set pieces in FM24.

“…new coaches will have a big impact on your careers pretty much straight away as they are the driving force behind our refreshed Set Piece Creator.

This creator marks a significant shift from how we’ve approached set pieces in previous editions of Football Manager. Now, the focus of every routine and scenario is on the players with the most appropriate Attributes instead of their positions in your tactic.” [from the Set Pieces refresh and coaches debut blog by SI].

WHAT I LIKE

1) Priority list. The main change of FM24 is how the roles are divided into its categories: Aerial ThreatBox Threat, Recovery Defender and Creators. This change also brought us a new Priority list.

This list “determines which roles you think are the most important at each type of set piece. If one of your players, based on their Attributes, is ranked number one in more than one role, they’ll be assigned to the one that’s positioned higher in the priority list.”

And I have to say tweaking this priority list and the ranking of my players within this priority list is the best thing within the whole FM24 set piece creator in my eyes. I think I spent more time tweaking this priority list than playing the game itself. I’m in the middle of the second season while writing this, that speaks for itself.

I, for example, like to have Creators set as the 2nd choice while using short corner kick delivery because I want to “create something” rather than just pump the ball to the box. If nothing more, this priority list and the ranking within each category allow you to play with it more than in the previous editions.

The fact the priority list and the ranking allow you to control where the players will be even if you rotate the full squad is, of course, a very pleasing bonus.

I would probably rather use the Decision attribute instead of Long Shots for the creator’s group but that’s for a different kind of debate.

2) Routine frequency. I don’t remember the exact phrase from the previous editions but when you had loaded more than one set piece routine in the past, it always told you something like “the routines will be rotated continuously (randomly) during the match” or something like that.

But FM24 has changed this “random change” to a very useful thing Set Piece Frequency. This popup window appears when you create/duplicate/load a new routine and you can decide what routine will be used more often, average or less often. The most important thing in my eyes is that you can change this frequency manually whenever you want. Just hit the button with the routine name and click on the “Modify Routine Frequencies” option.

I, for example, had my best aerial threat player injured for two weeks so I changed the priority and used the short routine more often than the routine with the near and far post delivery.

3) Overal-design-overhaul. I don’t play this because of the graphics quality or design. But I have to say the overall change of the creator is good and it’s a welcome change after so many editions (FM16 - FM23) with the same green pitch.

The popup windows, like when you click on the player dot on the pitch, feel more familiar and more natural. It’s also nice and useful that you can see all the important things in one popup window - the player, his key attributes, the role he is assigned to and there’s also another button to change his group. As I said, it’s a useful change.

There is nothing unnecessarily flashy here, on the contrary, everything seems quite decent. It looks better and it fits better to the skin overall.

WHAT I DON’T LIKE

1) Throw-ins. The already mentioned blog by SI has a chapter about the throw-ins. It’s called “A more authentic approach to throw-ins”. But how “authentic” it would be if you would come to the training camp of some big club and you would tell the manager and coaches they are not able to set up the throw-in routines for the defensive and middle third of the pitch? Just leave it random and let your players what they want to do.

Yes, in FM24, we can influence how your throw-in routines will look only if it’s a long throw-in routine within the attacking third of the pitch. One of my favourite routines in the Football Manager, but also in real-life football, is a clever movement of the players in combination with short delivery. Just a simple pass & move after a throw-in. But the only thing I can influence within throw-ins now is the long throw-in routine.

The rest is influenced by the AI and players. I select “work the line” or “retains possession” and I have to pray my players will have enough sense to not make something stupid. You can have as many set pieces coaches as possible or you can do all your set pieces by yourself but this is something you can’t influence in any way. Stupid in my eyes because as you can’t edit the routine, you can’t even select the right players for the right roles based on the priority list.

“Throw-in will be taken by the most suitable player on the designated side of the pitch.” But what about the rest of the players? Nothing. There are not even the key attributes for each role within the throw-in routines when you click on the players’ icon. When you switch to attacking routines, you can’t even see the names of the roles. The “middle third” throw-ins don’t even have the defensive routine available.

“More authentic” = more automated.

Also, the screenshot below shows when you hit the preview option within the defensive third routine of the defensive throw-in. I can’t influence where my players will be. I can’t influence the priority list. I can’t influence the wrong position and roles.

But it’s more authentic.

I just want to control my team and my players. Instead of this, I can see my player staying forward while he is set to mark the far post…

2) Defensive routines. Just one routine? Really? Another thing I really don’t like is the absence of the defensive corner and free-kick routines. By the word absence, I mean mainly the fact you can have only one defensive routine for all corners and for all free kicks.

You can have separate routines for shooting range, and wide and deep free-kicks. But you can have only one routine for defensive corners. The box with “Remove Routine, Reset to Default” and other options doesn’t offer the possibility to create a new one or duplicate the current routine in the same way as within the attacking routines.

There are also some new visuals “to illustrate how strong teams and individual players are at both attacking and defending set pieces” within the data hub in FM24. But even if you know that your next opponent has a dangerous near-post routine, you have to adjust your defensive routine before the match because your general defensive routine is based on the zonal marking without marking the near post. And next week you are playing against someone else who prefers to deliver corners to the far post. The only option is to create and save all the possible variations and load one of them ahead of every match.

3) Posts marking set-up. When you join a new club or you start a new save, there’s a simple “quiz” with a couple of questions about how you want to set up your set pieces. One of these questions is “What posts do you want players marking whilst defending?”. Three possible options in the game: both posts, near posts, or no posts. Do you miss some options? No? I do.

I miss the “Far post” as one of the options. It’s my personal preference probably but I have liked to use Mark Far Post for many years. But the current version of the game and the set piece creator offer only already mentioned options for the automatic set-up of set pieces. That means even If I would like to let my set pieces to some coach (I don’t want to), he will always ignore defending the far post area.

“Why am I always conceding goals from far post corners? Why did the set piece coach do nothing with it?” So, I have to take responsibility for set pieces and set it all by myself.

4) Type of delivery vs. corner taker. When I started creating routines in FM24, I was happy with the option “Set player XYX as the default taker from both sides” and the fact you can have it both ticked and unticked and you are not forced to use one option or the second one. But I found one thing very annoying.

When the popup window appears and you are trying to select the possible corner taker, you have “left footers” and “right footers”. But it doesn’t matter if you select the type of delivery as inswinger or outswinger, it will always search only left food players for the left side and right foot players for the right side.

And you can’t move the right-footed player to the left side and vice versa. Not sure where the player labelled as “either footed” would end. Maybe some description would be enough because right now, the only way how to influence who will take the corner is to switch between inswinging and outswinging delivery.

COACHES AND WHAT DIDN’T CHANGE

1) Set piece coaches. For me, personally, it doesn’t matter if there are set pieces coaches in the game. But that really is just a personal thing because I don’t trust AI and I rather do everything by myself in the game in terms of tactics, set pieces, squad selection, training etc.

So, I think the only reason why I should have the set piece coach in my save is that he is doing routines I can’t set by myself. Like throw-ins. He is helping with the set-piece training sessions. But on the other side, I’m responsible for set pieces so the game probably will always consider myself as the main one.

2) The movement. One thing that changed is that roles don’t have more than three key attributes. For example, a player who is set to attack near post had 6 key attributes in the past including Jumping Reach, Strength, Heading, Off The Ball, Bravery, Finishing and Decisions. In FM24, there are only the first three attributes.

It’s because it was divided between Aerial Threats and Box Threats. The box threats players now have anticipation, finishing and off the ball. But the roles as attack near post etc. are the same. It’s logical to use someone as a box threat if he has the mentioned three attributes higher than the aerial threats. I’m glad SI made this a little bit easier and reduced the amount of key attributes for each role.

But nothing has changed to the fact that your main aerial threat who is responsible for attacking the near post should be able to move at the right time to the right place, not only be a tall player with a lot of strength. No matter if the off-the-ball attribute is here or not.

CONCLUSION

The overall change of the set piece editor is useful and good in my eyes. It was much needed and I think it has some potential for sure, but I hope it won’t stop with this overhaul, and it won’t be like this for another seven or eight years as with the previous set piece creator.

Things like set pieces will always be a little bit complicated and not easy to implement in the game because of the style of this game. It’s based on the positioning and the off-the-ball movement principles. It will always have some limitations. I can understand it.

But it would be nice if the game would not create its own limitations in terms of “authentic-automated” routines you can affect. It kills the enjoyment from actual playing and it creates more “watching how someone else/AI is playing” the game.

All pictures in this post were taken from the game while using the default FM24 skin. It’s not a mistake but I made it on purpose to avoid some potential bugs within my own custom skin while using some outdated files.

Thanks for reading as always. Take care.

FM Slack alert!

There were a lot of changes within many social media including Twitter (now “X”) and it’s not the same as in the past. We can’t see many things due to the algorithm, weird preferences and many other reasons I don’t even want to know.

There are many Discord servers and I’m sure they are good and useful. But I will probably always be a bigger fan of Slack. Or better worded of the Football Manager Slack. Feel free to join us with this link.

You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.