I'd like to call for a tweak in the confidence side of 08.

I have recently gained promotion to the premiership with York City. Im bottom of the league with absolutely zero expercations of staying in the divison. Great i accept that, and so do the board.

So why, may i ask are the board really disapointed that i only reached the fourth round of the FA Cup, even though i met league champions Man Utd in that round?

Surely a little slack can be given considering it was Man Utd who knocked me out and not a smaller club?

This is a problem I've found a lot in FM08.

At Hinckley, I was expected to reach the Second Round of the FA Cup in 2009, but I drew League One Scunthorpe in the First Round.

OK, so I went out, but I lost 1-0 away from home.

The board were still disappointed.

It didn't feel fair!

What I have always thought is really silly is that you are not expected to stay in the Premier League (let's say a 19th- or 20th-place finish is expected), but you are expected to advance to the Round of 16 in the FA Cup. Not only should it take into account who you are playing (I mean it's a blind draw!), but also to put the league and cup expectations a little more in line with each other.

I'd like to see some different possibilities for the next FM.

I'll throw an example out:

Let's say you're a... Blue Square Premier club. You get knocked out of a cup by another BSP club. The board could give you the "disappointed" if both clubs were approximately the same quality or "sympathetic" if you were a newly promoted BSP club and you met a club who'd been relegated from League 2 last year.

Of course "sympathetic" would also pop up if you were knocked out by a club 3 or 4 divisions above you.

Aye, they need to consider WHO knocks you out more than what round you fail in.

I imgaine Derby would be ****ed off if they lsot the Fa Cup final to Barnet, but wouldn't be too unhappy losing a 3rd round tie away to Man United...

In game, Derby would be mighty ****ed at loosing to Man U, and delighted at reaching a final despite losing to Barnet.

i don't mind the minor bugs as such but it is bugs like this that make fm08 very difficult to enjoy. when your job security is impaired by bugs it is very hard to take the game seriously.

before the patch my contract wasn't renewed due to a confidence bug. the expectation was to win the championship but i was already promoted in the premiership but the board continued to be upset, it turned potentially one of the most fun games into a tragedy.

it must be a minimum requirement that the game is released without these bugs.

people say that testing takes a long time therefore not all bigs can be caught but all it takes potentially is a one season run through to have caught this problem. these bugs have cost me a lot of time so i'm allowed to be upset.

fm is a great game and i have appreciated the work of si over the years but there are certainly issues in fm08 that damage their repuation imo

The problem is that the board fail to take in to account the opponent, which kind of makes it a pointless feature...

I've got a terrible example of something similar. I was playing as Stevenage in the BSP, and was expected to reach Fourth Round of the FA Trophy. I defied all expectations, reaching the Final, where a Forest Green side who had nothing else to play for (I was fighting on three fronts) beat me 4-2.
The board were delighted with my performance in the Cup, however the fans match confidence bar was empty for the match. As low as it could possibly be?! Quite annoying...

MAJOR flaw in the game - no criticism of SI because I'm sure it's probably very hard to avoid - still damages game play enjoyment and can be the difference between not being sacked and being sacked. Any chance it'll be sorted in the patch?