Erithtotl

This was in '07 as well and I can't believe it's how it was intended. If I'm entitled to a friendly with my parent club every year, it has to be with their actual club, not the reserve team, even if they play reserve players. The difference is night and day. As Shelbourne my first year Man U's 1st team challenged me to a friendly, and even though several key players didn't play on their part I got like 9000+ in attendance. The second year their reserve team challenges me and I got 47 in attendence. That kind of defeats the point doesn't it?

The_Ultimate_Red_Devil

If you go to affiliated teams and click on the team it should say something like

<team> is under no obligation to field a full-strength side.

nick...

Arsenal usually send their reserves to face St. Albans pre season (once they sent a full strength first team).

It's usually a full house.

Where the difference in reputation between the clubs is huge, it shouldn't really matter what team they send out.

Even if Man U send their reserves, you'd still market it as Shelbourne vs Man U.

No-one would really mind.

atonement

he addressed that point

what hes saying is it should be the a team (with crappy players) and not the b team (with crappy players)

nick...

Not sure if that response was aimed at me or The_Ulti, but i'll back it up with another example.

A couple of years ago Aberdeen did a series of friendlies with the squad split into two seperate halves, both playing different lower league opposition on the same day (god knows why. the squad is thin enough anyway).

They were not split into a first team and second team. Both were similar strength, and drew similar attendances.

To do this on FM, your first team would draw big crowds and your reserves very very few.

In real life this is not the case with clubs of massively different reputations.

If Man U Reserves play at Shelbourne, they'll draw a big crowd, because it's still Man U

The problem with coding this though, is that you will have to draw the line at where the distinction is, as this does not extrapolate remotely through the leagues.

If Man City (first team) played Arsenal (reserves) pre season, there's a good chance they wouldn't even match the attendence at St. Albans*

*Maybe sliht exaggeration, but not a huge one.

Erithtotl

Yeah I think atonement is refering to Red Devil. It's not about sending a full strength side, it's about you getting the marketing benefit of the alliance, otherwise the affiliation has little value. As someone else mentioned, I'm pretty sure Man-U's youth taem would draw more than 47 fans!

Chas (Psyatika)

The simple solution here would be to not let teams send their reserve team to friendlies in cases like these.

If the game makes such a big deal about the "name" of the club (somehow Man Utd Reserves is a different club from Man Utd), then Man Utd Reserves should not be travelling about for friendlies until the coding is done differently.

Basically according to the game, when Man Utd Reserves travel for a friendly, the adverts around town are "Come see the Manchester United Reserves battle Shelbourne!", which would never happen; they would advertise Manchester United.

In these cases, the game needs to better distinguish when the reserve team is getting a warmup (why would they even need one?), and when the actual club is just fielding their B team for a smaller friendly (which would still attract fans on the power of the club's name alone).