Store Pack Frustrations

[00:00:00] Hello footies, welcome to FUT IN REVIEW powered by FUTCoaching.com bringing you leading analysis and opinion of all things Ultimate Team since 2019. We bring you two shows a week, fully produced as well as video shows on YouTube and Spotify. Of course, if you can spare us that little extra support, why not head over to Patreon.com forward slash FUT IN REVIEW

[00:00:23] where you can get a range of member benefits including Discord access, access to community tournaments, bonus shows and much, much more. Thank you also to our sponsors for today's show, Car Money. We'll have a little bit more on them later in the show. But a big thank you to our Patreon Skybox holders, Amar, Artyom and Peter. Hello footies, welcome back to your latest dose of EAFC 24 Ultimate Team podcasting goodness. We are FUT IN REVIEW powered by FUTCoaching.com.

[00:00:53] It is October the 30th as we recall this, although most of you will be listening in on Halloween for the 31st of October. Hope everyone has been enjoying themselves over the weekend. I can only apologise for those of you watching us on YouTube or Spotify that we are not in costume. My face is scary enough though. I am joined by Talking Foot John. We've got so much to get into today. We've got the Centurion's content. It's been coming out thick and fast. We've got Centurion's icon for you to complete.

[00:01:20] We've got a real legend of the women's game who's got an upgraded card as well. Plus, we've got to get into some discussion about the amount of store packs that EA are throwing at us. Plus, all of our regular features, Player IN REVIEW and Foot IN REVIEW. We've both got two heroes to review today, which is apt given the return of the Hero SBC. So let's get into it. John, my friend, how are you? Personally, really good, Dan. Again, FIFA-wise or EA Sports-wise or challenging? Challenging. How are you, mate?

[00:01:51] Yeah, I'm not so bad, thank you. I'm dealing with a two-year-old that has forgotten how to sleep at home and a football team that is eight points adrift at the bottom of League One. So not great, but FIFA's not too bad. It's a little bit of a run of salvation. I went out on Saturday night, patook in a few beverages, ended up in a bar for a Halloween party. I came back at about half past one.

[00:02:18] The clock's changed, so my memory of what time actually was is fuzzy. But I just rattled off four wins in five games in Weekend League. Is that the way to play your future? Apparently so. Yeah, listen to a load of spooky music, come back, and you'll be absolutely fine. But so let's get into it. Centurions is upon us, John. I mean, so far, the guys talked about it on Friday, Chris and John. I mean, what have you made of Centurions so far? I think the idea's great. We had something similar last year.

[00:02:48] There's a couple of things I don't like. I'm an evolutions objective, but are only four eligible players. So how do you get one of those four eligible players? And as per always, not even those four eligible players, the drop rates just seem to be non-existent. I don't think we've seen any in the Discord yet, and we're quite an active Discord. So the idea of it's great, I like a lot of things this year. Maybe it's my negativity. I think the implementation is just lacking a little bit. That's just my personal.

[00:03:16] Yeah, this game very much feels like window shopping when you're a kid at Christmas. You know, you're just going past all the toy shops and stuff, and you're getting to see all these great, shiny, fun things. And you think, oh, those would be great to have. And then, you know, your parents are like, no, you've got to wait for them. You're like, oh. Because, yeah, you can look, but you can't touch for a lot of these. The only Centurion I've seen has been, I had a choice to pick an Andrich, which I would have picked had I known about this Evo objective that had come out.

[00:03:45] Unfortunately, at the time, that wasn't there. So I went for the fodder option of Renard for an 88 over an 85. But no, I agree. The drop rate seems appalling. I think we've got, as you mentioned, we've got a Pack Pools channel on the Discord. Of course, you get access, patreon.com, of course, that's in review. Nobody's packing these cards. And you go on the market. There seems to be a little bit more supply of these hero, sorry, the Centurion icons than standard icons. But it's still pathetic weight. The Evo, let's get into it.

[00:04:13] We might as well talk about it now because that is probably one of the most controversial things of the weekend, John. So they've released this evolution. It is free. You can only use Centurion's players. And they've got to be, what is it, 85 and under? And they can only have a certain amount of pace. So even the likes of Simon, who you might think would be great, isn't eligible. So I think it's only like Andrich. Is it Munayin? Another one you can... Yeah, Munayin, yeah. And even with the full upgrade, I don't think any of them are really getting in your team.

[00:04:43] No, no. I mean, yes and no. Because I think you can turn your nose up sometimes at some of these cards like an Andrich. But actually, if you evolved Andrich with this evolution, he becomes an 87 rated card with 75 pace. He's Hullet going in everything else except for dribbling. And that's not a bad card at all. The problem is, like you say, John, it's getting hold of these players. And is it, you know, just is it worth your time? Especially when there are two other really chunky evolutions for people to be getting on with.

[00:05:12] It's like, how do you have the time? Well, I don't. Or shall I say, it's probably common knowledge. I'm not the greatest game player that we've got in the channel. So I've now started to get into a routine of, I'll do some objectives. But anything that is a big, massive time sink, I'm not investing my time in that. I want to chill, watch a bit of telly, catch up with the family.

[00:05:38] So from that point of view, these things that take 40 games, that's 40 games too many for me. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where it almost has to be a player that you can sort of live with playing in your team. I mean, I've actually quite enjoyed squad battles this year in the kind of times I've had. But now that I don't stream as much and things like that, I've got like an hour or so. I quite like other John is not going to be a fan of this. So John, turn off now.

[00:06:03] I don't mind sitting there just playing Gates the AI for an hour while I'm watching something on YouTube or I'm listening to some music. It's relaxing. I get to score fun goals. I get to use different players. And as someone that grew up playing things like Master League and Pro Evolution Soccer and played offline a lot. But it's only really since I came back to FIFA and for FIFA 20 that I've got really into an online competitive scene. I've always been happy bashing the AI in whatever game it is, whether it's Football Manager, things like games like Civilization, whatever. So I don't mind.

[00:06:32] So yeah, just putting someone like a Llorente in there for 40 games, I will get it done eventually. But yeah, the time constraints are tough. Can you do it all in squad battles? Go some online. I have a feeling you can do it all in squad battles. I'd have to double check. I'll really look at that then. I'll really look at that because I have already completed this, the 300 squad battles achievement. Yeah. So you can just go through it. Yeah. No, you scored 10 goals in squad battles. Yeah. Win 10 squad battles.

[00:07:02] Win 10 squad battles. Yeah. Assistant squad battles. So yeah, you can do the entire Saturians box to box in squad battles. So that's not too bad. I might review that again. I saw a grudge pink. Yeah. But even so. But it's a good, if that was an SBC, if somebody else put on X, if that was an SBC, we'd probably all do it for about 150k. Yeah, exactly. So there are some very good players for it. The nice Assure of Many and Llorente and stuff. I might do Llorente. Although the good, the thing is I'm actually holding back on a lot of these evolutions now

[00:07:32] because you never know what cards are going to get released. And you're almost just like, do I kind of mix up evolutions and stuff like that? Because it's typical that EA will release another evolution in about three days time. And then I'll sit there and look and think, oh, I could double evolution this player and they'll be better. So I think Yngwie was talking about it the other week. You know, it'd be nice if we had a kind of roadmap and a bit of advance warning about what kind of evolutions were coming out. But EA won't do that because, you know, FOMO is what makes this game go round.

[00:08:02] So yeah, you have got the Centurions upgrade. As mentioned, there's only four players available for it at the moment. So, you know, not a great deal of choice and a bit of an odd one. But it's a bit of a sign of things to come, I think, on that front. If you do want to get a guaranteed Centurions player though, John, we did have one released yesterday. Marta, the Brazilian legend, you know, legend is an overused word, but she is truly one of the icons of the women's game, coming to the very tail end of her career now. But I mean, what do you make of this card?

[00:08:32] The obvious thing that a lot of people will be put off by is the pace. It's only 80, even though she's an 87 rated card. Can you see past that pace? I think you can. Yeah. I don't think pace is desperately king anymore, but that's just my perception. I'm using strikers that have got sub 80 pace. I'm using midfielders with sub 80 pace. So I definitely think you can work around a lack of pace. What's your thoughts on that? Definitely.

[00:09:00] I mean, I've been using people like Kevin De Bruyne in my midfield, who I think is fantastic. I think he's paced in the 70s. Okay, you boost that with a shadow and get it into the 80s. But you can do the same here with Marta by just chucking a catalyst or a hunter or a shadow on her if you'd wanted to. I think this is the kind of card that if you are running something like 412 and 2 narrow and you have that genuine cam, I think that it's an ideal kind of card for it.

[00:09:25] She's got the Flare Playstyle Plus, which is not one of the better Playstyle Pluses, John, because it doesn't kind of do anything, does it? No, not down. But she's got plenty of other ones as well. She's got technical, first touch, trickster, Trevella and acrobatic as well. Of course, the five-star skill moves, four-star, weak foot as well. She's very small, five foot three.

[00:09:51] So she's got that kind of nimbleness to her, kind of Neymar-esque in terms of a player. And I think Neymar's a pretty decent comparison. But I think it's just, it's not even the pace that puts me off this, John. It's the cost. I think 260,000 coins for this card, who is hard to work into a lot of formations, is just too much for me. Yeah, I think it's the league as well. It's not the nation, it's the league. And that creates that sort of chemistry issue.

[00:10:18] And what could you buy for 200,000, 300,000 coins? I think it's that balance and act. So if you're absolutely stacked with Duke Fodder, it's certainly an option. I'm personally skipping it because I don't actually have that many Brazilians and I don't actually have a place to put her. Yeah, I would be easily doing this card because I think it would be a fantastic super sub if it was about 120K. But I can't go near it for 260,000 coins.

[00:10:46] It's like you say, I think the Lynx, the NWSL. Yeah, I mean, they've got some fantastic cards in there this year. They're like Sophia Smith and players like that. You need to push to what, four, five, six players to make that work? Yeah, I mean, I quite like the idea of a Marta and Dabinia combo. I think if you were playing maybe like a 4-2-2, having those just kind of your wide cams could do the job. But yeah, a good card. I just think it's very, very overpriced of what it is. Some very good stats in there.

[00:11:17] The balance of 95, the agility 83. And again, we take into account that body type. The 92 composure as well. And I love composure. I think for me is one of the first things I look for for any attacking player. It's underrated this year. Yeah, exactly. Passing is all above 85 except for long passing at 82. So great card, just a little bit too expensive. Talking about creative players as well, John, we have seen the maestro Andrew Pirlo release. Another one for head of foot coaching, John,

[00:11:46] to get into Juventus past and present. Fan of this card? It's got some decent boosts on it. Yeah, it's a nice card. I think it's the price that puts me off 580, give or take. You know, I mean, he's got, obviously, some really good play styles. The biggest one is dead ball. So if you're into your free kicks, that's brilliant. The rest of it, ping pass, long ball pass, swear, first touch. It's really nice.

[00:12:18] It's just a really nice card. Where would you play him? Is he box to box? Yeah, I think so. Because he's lacking in physical. He doesn't have the great finish in. What chemistry card would you put on him? Because the passing and dribbling is ace. The pace we just talked about, you don't always need to have plus 80. Pacing, he's got 80. But where do you play him? Because he's finishing his 80. His defense, his awareness is 74. His strength is 68. His aggression is 56.

[00:12:48] So how do you play him? Unless you're super good and play, you know, a 4-3-3 second variation. He's your CDM, but he's truly there for pinging the balls around. I just don't know what I would use him. It's a tricky one. I mean, I just brought him up, Kevin De Bruyne. I see kind of comparisons in that. And Pirlo's a lot quicker than De Bruyne. I would play him, I think, I run a 4-3-2-1 and I have that kind of one midfielder who is basically, it almost works.

[00:13:16] He's like a second striker, which is De Bruyne who kind of arrives. That's the kind of role I would put Pirlo in. I'd probably chuck a hunter on him for that position. I think you could get away with him as a bit of a box-to-box or even if you were running like a 4-2-3-1 and you had one of those CDMs who was, you know, you don't have on stay back. You have on balance. I think that could be the kind of role to play. I mean, you know, the quarterback position because that passing is... That passing is unbelievable. But, you know, you look at Pirlo's Passes 95

[00:13:44] and Kevin De Bruyne who talked about his Passes 94. You know, in total in-game stats, there's about 50 difference. Yeah. But one is 500,000 pounds, 500,000 coins difference. So don't get me wrong. Mate, it'll cost you that in the store to get the follower to get this pack in. And I know. But, yeah, so lovely card. And, you know, it's one of those things if, see, he was in packs and you pulled him, I think you'd be like, oh, brilliant. I'll try and fit him in. I'll try and work him.

[00:14:12] I'll try and, you know, like you said, box-to-box or quarterback. You would try and get him in. I don't know if I'd want to spend 580,000 coins to get him in when I already have Frank Lampard, Kevin De Bruyne, Becklin Rice, and I play a 4-4-2. So I've only got two spots available. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just it, isn't it? And you compare it. And I said, you compare him to De Bruyne. And like you pointed out, there's not much in it. And it's 520,000 coins less.

[00:14:39] Yeah, the icon links are very nice with Pirlo. And he is a legend of the game. And it is always nice to play with legendary players. But you've got a month to complete it. And it's just the generation of fodder, though, isn't it, John? It's just like you sit there. We're going to delve into it more when we come to talk about store packs and things like that. But finding an 88 and 87 and 86 squad at the moment, most people are dead out of fodder. Yeah, I've been to the store. I keep saying I won't.

[00:15:10] I've got a slightly addictive personality. I'm in there quite regular, even though I don't want to be. We'll talk on that properly. This is the problem. I've already done all the milestones, points, and ripped all the packs. I've already done all the squad battles. I've pretty much done all the goals. I've done all the assists. I've done first owners. I've done bronze. I haven't got any fantastic packs this year. I haven't got anything. My fodder's thin. Yeah.

[00:15:40] There you go. But if you've got the fodder, he's a nice card. Yeah, but I would not be going out and spending, you know, even if you can knock off a third of that price, I think 400,000 coins is too expensive for this card. I really do. I think there are so many better cards, especially when you take into account the evolutions and things like that these days. I mean, it's just, yeah. I mean, you look at someone, you know, you can evolve for that 150K that you can put in. I would much rather have someone like a Lorente. I'd much rather have a Shumeni,

[00:16:08] even someone like a Bruno Guimaraes that you can put in the Centurion's upgrade for 150,000 coins. I'd much rather be doing that than spending it on peer load. But it's there. It is there for a month. Maybe EA get a little bit more generous with the fodder. I don't think it's going to happen, but it's something you can slowly work towards. And I never hate having the option there. I've always been very much a feeling that I don't mind if something is too expensive, in inverted commas, as long as you give people time to do it. And more importantly, it's there.

[00:16:38] Like, put your Sabio in there now for 2.5 million. Like, yeah, it's ridiculously overpriced, expensive, but at least it's there. And you'd probably be thinking you'd want to do that. Exactly. So we've also got, in terms of having a gamble, the Hero SBC is back, the Max 87 rated. You can do it twice now, John. 84 and 85 rated squads. No special requirements in there, which is nice. It's basically a little bit easier to complete. Have you had another dabble? Yeah, I did both.

[00:17:07] I got a reset at the first, which I thought was good. Solid card. I already had untradable Phil and Mendy. They are, so it was a bit like, not what I really wanted. But he's in. We'll see how he goes. It has made me change my team for chemistry. And then I gambled again with the last of my fodder and it got Marcus De Beasley. Oof. Not ideal. Thank you. I did. After getting Jersey Dudek last week,

[00:17:34] yesterday I did it with my Foot Champs rewards and managed to get Mostavoy. Which I think was less than, because I'd got packs like someone, I think a Casemiro tradable. And I think he'd cost like less than one of the single players I put into the SBC. So nevermind. But although in saying that, I don't think Mostavoy is a bad card. He's got the, what is it? The flair, not flair, the technical play style plus. And I brought him on. I played a couple of rivals games this morning, brought him off the bench.

[00:18:03] And actually did pretty well coming off Kevin De Bruyne. So just one of those cards though, that because that has such a poor low coin value, you're like, it's a bit pointless. And as I said, because I put some tradable fodder in, it's a big L for me. But again, I think the price point is fine. It's worth a punt. I have seen some good pools. I was watching some streamers. I've seen a few Marquezios pop out. Not seen too many Aya Tauri's. Somebody in the Discord got a Aya Tauri. Yeah, they did. And also someone got a joke cold as well, I saw.

[00:18:32] So it's worth a punt, especially if you are holding, a lot of people are holding on to a lot of kind of 84s, 83s. I was going to say, I did it myself. I've done it twice, Dan, because obviously I like a wee gamble. But when do we get our UEFA Heroes packs? November? Yeah, middle of November. So we've got a couple of weeks. Two weeks away. So in theory, if you think about it, we're gambling on a Aya, really. Or ask that level. But you're about to get,

[00:19:02] most of us, not all of us, most of us will get a free hero in about two weeks anyway. Exactly. So it was... Still didn't stop me doing it. Yeah, exactly. And I think, again, a lot of it comes down to boredom as well. Sometimes we get to this stage of the game cycle where people have kind of built a decent team and then you're kind of almost like reaching and you kind of need that big player. You need that Yagatore, Robbie Keane or someone like that to kind of boost your team. So again, it's out there.

[00:19:32] It's worth having at least one go, I think. Because even the players that you think, oh, well, they're not very good. The likes of Jersey Dudek. It's nice to have like a hero keeper in the club. So I'm not too displeased with it. But look, let's talk. We danced around the topic. We've kind of talked about it a little bit. The amount of store packs that are in this game at the moment, John. Now I tallied them up this morning and just the special kind of the unique pack, promo packs they've put in the store would cost you eight and a half thousand FIFA points to do.

[00:20:01] So roughly depending on how you divvy it up, what it's about 50 to 60 pounds to do. And that's just this week. That's not including all of the packs that they've had thrown at us before. And that's not including the fact that, you know, you've got access to 12 prime gold players packs at 600 points each, 10 rare players packs at a thousand points each. So he added all of those on just those 10 rare player packs. You're talking 18,000 FIFA points and you're talking over a hundred, over a hundred pounds

[00:20:31] that EA are letting you spend. Now, before we go into this, of course, there are the caveats. EA have introduced play controls. You can set limits for yourself. And they are very open about that, but it's getting really, it's grating on me, John, because especially when I combine that with the problems we've discussed about getting fodder and especially tradable fodder and just the little niggly things

[00:21:00] like all these icon SBCs, how they took out the two rare gold player packs for doing the bronze squads and things like that. The way they are driving you to the store is becoming, gross is the word I want to use. Absolutely. They know it works. It clearly works. I don't know what their strategy is this year around, obviously some sort of revenue target or growth target since they're split from the FIFA sponsorship deal

[00:21:30] or whatever we want to call it. So they're obviously out to do something to prove that EA Sports is, FC is working and it doesn't need the FIFA name. They're going to talk about revenue growth. They're going to talk about profitability. All these commercial targets, IPOs, KPIs, whatever you want to call them. They're obviously on some sort of mission to smash that. Tied into the fact that, like you said, the player base is massive now. There are so many cards around 80 to 84. I don't even get that many 84s.

[00:22:00] They drop really good SBCs that require some sort of high rated packs, players. So the best way to go get players now isn't to grind them, it's to go buy them. Like I said, I can't open packs because I've got no squad bottle packs left. I've got no first owners left. I've got no goals, assists left. So the only way I can get them now is grind drafts are not good enough. Poor champs are not really good enough. Go to the points store. Well,

[00:22:29] maybe just treat myself to some points. But what you get from those that you hit on is the really good packs are untradeable. So fine for possibly an SBC, but doesn't hurt your coin balance. But even the drop rate in them is absolutely turgid. Yeah. And then when you also put on top of that, the fact they are releasing these even more juiced up evolutions, you know, 150,000 coins or a thousand FIFA points to do the Centurion's

[00:22:58] box-to-box midfielder where people, you know, you can get a Lorente who is a fantastic card that's going to last you for a while. It's, I don't know. And I spoke to, you know, I think there was someone else in the Discord that was like, I wanted to do this pack, this upgrade, but I didn't have any players. So where have I gone? I've gone to the store. My friend, he got me back into this game. I was talking to him last night and he was sort of saying, you know, he was going to upgrade Lorente and I was like, oh, did you spend the coins on it or did you know, did you get the credit card out? I was like,

[00:23:28] I got the credit card out. And I use him as a real barometer of someone that is invested in this game, but not maybe to the kind of extra level that we are, you know, we podcast about it, you know, we're in an active Discord and things like that. I think I would put people like us in the kind of top 5% of how dedicated and interested we are in this game. I'd put him probably closer to the kind of in the 50, 60% kind of level. And if that's the kind of player that EA are targeting and it's clearly working, it is working.

[00:23:57] So from my, you know, my A-level business studies head, I'm like credit to this company because they are make, they've got to be making money hand over fist with the amount and they've got this whole process down to such, and it's been a slow, real, it's been a real slow burn as well. And as someone that has been podcasting about this now for three, four years, you look at how they got rid of League SBCs. They made more and more stuff untradable.

[00:24:27] They, even the way they, they marketed and, sorry, manipulated and changed the rivals rewards now where it's like, oh, well, the best option for you is to take these untradables. You know, the amount of coins you get has gone down. The amount of tradable packs has gone down. Foot Champs rewards, I've got a little bit better, but that's once a week. And like you said, it's not for everyone. Not everyone is able to get rank five, rank four and above. Some people can't even get in. Exactly. To Champs. So there's, there's a skill gap

[00:24:57] or a skill wall that takes a chunk of the game away from people, which again, takes rewards away from people which strikes you to the store. I have limited, look, the, I don't want to get into a moral and a deep discussion on things like addiction. I think we, there are plans in the works on, from this, this podcast to do a special on that. I will just say that. So I don't really want to get too deep into it here because it's a very complex issue and, you know, deals with a lot of things that go far above a video game.

[00:25:27] But my attitude has always been for FIFA, EAFC. as long as you give people the chance to just grind this game and go through gameplay and things like that, put whatever you want in the store because then you can legitimately go and say, well, no, you have access to all these players. You know, it was the same when we had Icon Gate a couple of years ago. Do you remember the kind of press releases they were putting out saying, well, everyone has that can technically access any player in this game without even putting

[00:25:56] exactly a single penny in. And you could just about, because I think that was what, 50 for 21. And I think you could just about make that argument with, because they did things like League SBCs and to get other ways of getting rewards. This game, I'm sorry, how, how, how are you supposed to, if you wanted to do Liao and Son, for example, Player of the Month, good luck. Honestly, good luck. Yeah, alone doing like Marta and two Hero SBCs.

[00:26:26] They prey on the fact that people have this FOMO and want to do everything. And maybe it's up to us as a community to start accepting the fact that we shouldn't be doing everything. We should be more selective. We should be managing our clubs better. But at the same point, it's harder and harder to have that attitude when you've got 60 quids worth of store packs in there. When there is a 300,000 coin or 3,000 FC point 100 rare gold player pack. I did that one, Dan. Do you want to know what my key

[00:26:57] pull from that was? Go for it. Donnarumma. Yeah. That was it. That was the only walkout. Donnarumma. And it's garbage and you've paid, what is that, 3,000 FIFA points so that is the best part of what, 20, 25 quid? Yeah, it was 20 quid worth the discount. EA Play discount. Just gone and nothing. And I had over 30 dupes. Yeah. It's punishing people on both ends and I had this conversation

[00:27:26] on the show last week with Nate because it's punishing the people on both ends because some people will say, a lot of people will be like, well, I don't have the 20 quid to spend on that store pack so it's not fair on playing against those people that have got the money to spend on it. But then the people that do spend on it like yourself will go, I've just spent 20 quid and I've got no advantage whatsoever. You know, it's not even pay to win because you're not guaranteed to win from it. Yeah, that's the more frustration I think. Yes, it was guaranteed to have,

[00:27:56] I think, two 85s. Two, two players 85s. Yeah, and I got an 87 and an 85. Awful. Just awful. So, look, it's hard to know really where to go with this conversation because, again, it's just more of an opinion and obviously, please get in touch with us on all our socials at Foot Coaching how you feel about this issue. Yeah, I would say you're right because we've got like early access or most, a lot of the people that all listen to this pod

[00:28:25] are like keen FIFA EA sports players so they're probably, like you said, in that percentage that are invested so a lot of us would have got early access so because we've done that I was already level 40 beginning of last week. Where's the bonus to keep playing? And now, you shouldn't play for rewards as John always says but that's why most of us do it. So, if after 40 for every 10 games you play or every 20 games you play or every 100 goals you score or something but you're literally, well,

[00:28:54] I've got no rewards from that, I've got no rewards from this, I've got no rewards from that so I literally am playing just to be better or for the fun of the game but because every mode is dead competitive apart from the score battles but, yeah, okay, let's move on. Yeah, I very much agree with you. I mean, I'm at that point I've hit level 40 as well and again, people will say, well, you know, maybe not enjoying it. Don't play it. I played a couple of rivals games this morning. I'm still down in Div 4

[00:29:24] because I just don't play a lot of rivals this year. If I do have time, I will grind squad battles and I look forward to playoffs and weekend league because it's the most casual game mode out there from my point of view and my ability level and I'm not, I'm very much an 11 win to 14 win merchant so I'm, you know, I'm not, not in that very top tier but I'm at a good level. I've just got promoted to Div 3 which I was kind of, and it's weird because I'm sat here feeling a bit bummed about getting to Div 3 because I now know

[00:29:53] I'm going to have harder games to get this, not much better rewards. Only till Thursday. Only till Thursday. Then I get to be back in Div 5 which is the division Reading will be in very soon. And on that note, let us take a little break and hear from our sponsors. This show is sponsored by Car Money, the car finance ninjas fighting to make cars affordable and accessible for everyone no matter your financial situation. Nicky, the car finance ninja here

[00:30:22] compares the top car finance lenders in both the UK and Australia to get you the best possible price so you don't have to and they can get you approved fast. All you need to do is choose your new car and drive away happy. Get in touch with one of their friendly ninjas and start your car finance journey today. Right, welcome back John. Let's move away from some of our frustrations and critiques of EA. Let's talk about the actual gameplay and stuff we've been playing ourselves. I think we should kick off

[00:30:51] this second part of the show with Player in Review. There we go. Need to get a fancy sting made up for that but in the meantime my slightly spooky voice will have to do. John, who is the player you have picked for today's Player in Review? I think it's good now that hero packs are out but obviously you can't pack this one of the heroes but he's cheap as chips. He's three star, four star can play central midfielder or cam it is

[00:31:21] Yari Littman. The former bane of icon packs himself. Yeah, but there's a couple of caveats. He doesn't have lots of play styles and he's only got three star skills but as a person he doesn't use any skill moves apart from the odd ball roll by mistake. Yeah. When your hand slips. What am I doing? So, from that point of view he's 5'11", three star, four star, high attacking, medium work rate

[00:31:51] but a couple of the call outs are 91 composure that we talked about, 92 reactions, 90 ball dribbling, 87 short passing before any sort of chemistry card, 88 long passing, sorry, long shots, yeah, plus 80 pace, he was, I got him when he was 40k, he's now down to less than 30,000 coins. Wow. Do you know, and he just,

[00:32:21] the way I played 4-4-2, I like, one stiker to be on getting behind, stay forward, one of those getting behind because I'm not very great at FIFA or EA Sports and I've got him unbalanced so Yari Lippmann plays that balance role, he just drops a little bit into midfield even though he's only getting behind the three ball come back and he comes in, picks up the ball, uses that short passing of 87, uses that composure, uses that ball control, just picks up the ball, moves it on, he actually is the guy that creates or assists

[00:32:50] most of my goals so, yeah, I'm really, really happy with him. And at that place, on you. I was going to say, a lot to like about that Carlos, I love that composure and the reactions of 92 as well and the ball control, can very much see him as one of those players that kind of arrives into the box and has that little bit of extra ability to just kind of move the ball just into a position to fire off. Yeah, and the way I play my EA is, I said it on the pod with that, with Nate, is I go right back

[00:33:20] to right wing, basically. I don't go to the byline and cut back but I get to the sort of edge of the box, a cut over to my striker which is usually a lot of them and then he then crosses it over to Benzema or passes it over to Benzema, Benzema puts it away so he gets so many assists from me but he uses that composure, he uses that short pass and he's just in the right place and he gives you three chemistry. Yeah, and that first touch plus play style is underrated as well especially for receiving the ball in the box

[00:33:49] and being able to get those shot offs. Yeah, and obviously because I'm using him as a secondary striker I've put a hunter on him so it takes his finishing up to 96, it takes his positioning up to 97, it takes his pace up to 90. Brilliant, brilliant all round cheap wee card. Yeah, you're almost talking me into him which is a sign of a good player in review. I'm going to review Park Ji Sung's hero card, again a player

[00:34:19] who is available. I paid 200k for him on Friday, of course he's dropped to 160, so yay me. Wiping out my profit from weekend league. Never mind, but he's fantastic. I loved Park's cards last year and I think, again I play that 4-3-2-1, I use him as the main boxed box man, I've got Kante as my holding player and I've got De Bruyne as the more attacking creative player, but Park, again he's got that relentless plus, he is just everywhere up and down the pitch,

[00:34:47] he's great at defending, great at going forward, he pops up with a number of goals as well, so just all round, if you are looking for a box-to-box midfielder, fantastic, he's got a slight problem in kind of his positioning because you can't actually play him as a CM, I have to kind of run him as a right midfield and then just bring him inside because he's only got LM, RM and left wing positions but for 160,000 coins I think he's fantastic, he replaced Frankie de Jong in my side

[00:35:17] and yes you have to pay a lot more for Park, but I think he's just an overall more rounded card than Frankie did, Frankie's problem was mostly in the final third, so again I mean you look at Park, it's only defence where he's not part of Hullet gang, he's got 78 defending but again that's not his job is it, he's just got that presence but it's not what his main presence is about, yeah. No and at 5'10", of course he's not the biggest player but again he's got the perfect mix of play styles for the

[00:35:46] way I play in my formation which is relentless so he's again the stamina never drains, he's got ticker-tacker so he can keep that ball moving along, intercepts, great when he's defending and the press proven, press proven I really really value in my midfields especially if you are someone that's struggling to deal with teams playing at 71 depth, that's where you know someone like Park comes in because he doesn't suffer as much from that press, he gets the ball and can move it along, can switch it between from side

[00:36:15] to side so lots to like about Park Ji-sung and again now he's just 160k, definitely think there's value, I'm really looking forward to seeing his Champions League card. On that Dan, would you have Park or would you have Llorente? I, and so funnily enough this was exactly the question I was toying with myself today, do I spend 150k coins on Llorente or do I run Park, now Park's got the bonus of course of being a hero, so ultimately

[00:36:45] getting that three chem straight away and helping my Premier League squad, it also helps in fact I've got Kim Min-Song player of the month as well so you get the South Korea chemistry as well. So I think I'm probably just going to keep Park and let his value ride down, might still end up doing Llorente as well, but it's hard because I've not used that Llorente card, but right now I don't see a reason that I would get rid of Park. There you go, good place indeed. And from Park,

[00:37:15] we drive off, we will do foot in review, formation in review, we're already doing foot in review, formation in review, will return at the end of the show, but I thought we would dive into the mailbag. Of course, you can submit your questions in to our discord if you are a patron member of patreon.com for slash foot in review. That also gets you access to things like the live recording of the show. We've got a couple of people listening in as well. So hello to all of you out there as well. Of course, you get early access to this very podcast as well. It will come out for our

[00:37:45] patron members on Monday as we record this on Monday morning. And of course, for everybody else, you'll be getting this on Tuesday night, the 31st on Halloween. Right. Let's get into those mailbag questions. And John, we've had a couple one from your namesake, the head of foot coaching, the man who started this very podcast is John. And he asks us, he says, I've got 1 million coins, but I'm very anxious to spend. One of the things I'm considering is to buy players to put into SBCs to take the edge off it. But that probably won't make sense.

[00:38:15] Am I alone in this feeling and how to deal with it? John, how do you find spending coins? Horrible. I had, I've taken a slight pun, I've bought Harry Kane's Trailblazer card for 316,000, which is the majority of my coins last night. So I'll give him a run this week. Previous to that, I put about 300,000 coins into 86 rated fodder and

[00:38:44] some 81, 82 team of the weeks for a long, long, long term hold. Because, again, I saw the coins sitting there, it was a wee bit, what do I do with the coins? I don't want to buy, horrible thing to say, I don't want to buy a gold player that's 100 for 150,000 coins, for example, and then he will be worth 90, 80, 76, and you feel like you've potentially wasted your coins. So from that point of view, I did

[00:39:13] that, so I've got about 40, Trent, Alexander, Arnold, sitting on my transfer list, and all I'm literally doing, pick them up at 11, they're not worth much more than that, but every time there's an SBC that needs a couple of, well, Trent goes into every SBC, I basically just pull them off my list, pull them off my list, put them into an SBC, pull them off another list. So that's what I did, I'm not a trader, that's where you're going to come in Dan and give them some proper advice, but that's what I've done, I've put loads of in forums, loads of 86s,

[00:39:43] and they're just sitting on my transfer list and pull them when I need them. Yeah, it's a very good bit of advice, I mean, look, the whole being reticent and being reluctant to spend coins is something that I deal with, I've kind of got a very similar coin balance to you, John, I've got around a million, maybe 1.2 if I liquidated, and I've kind of been roughly sat around that, I do make a little bit from trading, but I'm not making massive amounts, I'm not doing big moves, because I don't like taking big

[00:40:13] gambles on things, even though I know they make sense, and also I've had less time to be able to repopulate fodder and sell fodder and things like that, so long story short, I've kind of been on this coin balance, and what I've been doing is renting players for the weekend, as mentioned, people like Park, I'll buy them on Friday just before I play my games, and I'll sell them fairly quickly, I've taken a bit of an L with Park this week, because after tax, I will probably have lost about 50k, but I will make that up in a weekend league, so I'm quite

[00:40:42] a big fan of having a good core of untradables, and then maybe just buying one or two star players that you either hold on to and you just say, you know what, they're going to drop, that's just, it's just tax, it's almost kind of like a wage, you know, they've dropped 20k this week, but you know, you'll make 20k just by playing what, 20 odd games over the course of a week, so I guess it's just a case of looking at what you're, what you want to do with the coins ultimately, it's are you

[00:41:12] saving for a real big buy, is there a player at the very top end of this game, so like a particular icon that might be 1.5 million coins, if that's the case, then, and you've got a million coins right now, then yeah, I would be not spending them, I'd just be kind of wait, because naturally that player will drop, drop, drop and drop, but otherwise, if you're at a point where you've got a really good competitive side, again, just try players out, lose those, lose those coins a bit, and don't worry so much, because I think the players that

[00:41:42] you do spend the big bucks on, your likes of your gold Virgil van Dijk's, for example, at 250k, they're not going to drop anytime soon, because even when these new cards come out, these new cards are so hard to pack, and they're also so expensive, I mean, if you look at the cost of this new Tomori card that's come out, he's about what, 350k at the moment? I don't think he's going to be that much better than gold Virgil van Dijk, so you may as well just go out and buy it, and again, that's why I do think you should have one or two big buys in your club, and then just try

[00:42:12] and run as best you can with the untradables, so look, I think in terms of the buying players to put into SBCs, as you said, John, I think that's a good way of doing it, I think if you do invest in someone like, I mean, I put about 200k, I think, into Sons, Player of the Month, and I've justified that by the fact that this card isn't going anywhere, it's going to be good for months, and now I don't have to worry about it, I've got one of my positions lobbed off, it's done, don't worry about it, and I don't

[00:42:41] have to worry about that card fluctuating up and down, so I think that is a good way of dealing with perhaps if you are a little bit reluctant to spend coins, and there are some, as we've talked about, there are some fantastic cards available for you to complete right now, so look, I hope that made sense, John, I hope that answered your question, the next question comes in from Kyle Quaders, he says, I'm struggling to get a solid build up from my team, what do you suggest I try to do so I make passes out of defence easier? John, any advice from yourself? It's the man that's probably in the lowest division out of

[00:43:11] everybody in our discord, I'm probably not the man to answer this, but realistically, I think John, foot coaching John has talked a few times, it's about having that whipped pass, and I think you're out as your left back to right back, but they both need to have really good passing to get that working, I know I've had players that don't have it, so when you try it, the ball goes so slow, it takes forever to get there, and they nip in and take it from you, but if you've got that sort of whipped pass, the ball just goes ping,

[00:43:41] ping, ping, and that gives you that out, left back to right back, vice versa, down the wing, into the middle, that's what I would do. Yeah, and of course, make sure you're buttons, I think it is, again, my controls are all messed up because I changed them to be like old PES controls, but I think it's L2 or L trigger for most people to call a player short and then it's R2 or R1

[00:44:10] to send the player long. L1, so no, I don't know. Left for short, right to send them. Yeah, yeah. What are those two ways? Again, I apologise my controls are all over the place, but again, you can look them up on the menu. For calling players short, it's such an underused feature and all you do is you look in the direction of a player that you want to come short, press that button and you come back. And again, John, who is listening in, saves the day and this is why he's the head of foot coaching and I'm not a coach. R is

[00:44:40] for short, L is for long. So it's R1 for coming short, R1 for sending them long. But yeah, it's a massively underused feature and you just literally look at the player you want to do, tap R and then they come short. So if you are finding yourself under pressure, maybe call that full back shorter in towards you. If there's a midfielder in a bit of space, maybe you

[00:45:10] bring them in as well. And also sending players on runs as well. The amount of times I will just sweep the ball across, I'll ping from the centre-back to the right-back, ping it back the other way and then just hit L and trigger my other fullback to make a run and make the space. So yeah, that would count as our tip of the day, but we save those for Friday so maybe John will do it in a much less butchered fashion. I'm just a vocal talent, I'm not the coach

[00:45:39] and I never claimed to be. So look, Kyle, hope that helps. That again, that is good. I think John and Chris talked about it a lot on Friday's show as well so I'd very much encourage anyone to go back. And listen to it there. And John, there was another tip as well. He says, when you pass to a player and flick the right stick to somewhere, the player that passed the ball will move in the direction of that flick. That's too complicated for me. Indeed. Look, again, we're putting out lots of stuff on our

[00:46:09] socials again, foot coaching for TikTok, Insta, X. We're making a lot of videos for tips like this. So again, if you're not following us, that gives you every reason to follow because we do little tutorials of practical examples to show. So maybe that'll be the next one that gets made on our list. But look, let's finish up. Thank you very much again for those questions in the mailbag. Let's finish with formation in review, John. And look, when I initially started this feature, I was like, yeah, we'll do one each each week. But then I realized, well, there's only

[00:46:38] about 25 formations in the game. So we're running through them quite quick. So I think we're just going to go down to one formation and it's a good opportunity to get your thoughts on your formation and the pros and cons with it. So what is the formation that you're using at the moment and what do you find good and what may be a bit restricting about it? Well, I'm persevering with a variation of a 4-4-2 that was shared in the Discord as a Patreon special. But I've made some tweaks. I'm now running long ball with forward runs

[00:47:08] and I score, I do score quite a lot of goals. I lost the game 7-6 this morning. But for me, that's its own story. I still lost 6 goals. So even though I have my fullbacks on stay back and conserved interceptions, I find every time I play a team that uses any variation of a 4-3-3, so they have two wingers, not two right midfielders, my fullbacks just seem to get the ball goes past them all the time and forever chasing

[00:47:38] back and through balls. I think the person that played used 60 through wingers, and it was just like, geezo, geezo. So for me, every time, I really like it for going forward, it's quite balanced, I don't play through the middle, so I'm probably not getting the best of my formation anyway. I find the middle so congested. If you look at my heat maps, it literally has two strips down the side, nothing in the middle. But every time I play any variation of a 4-3-3,

[00:48:08] I feel like my fullbacks are just all over the place. But that's what I'm working on, I'm just persevering with that because I'm a bit like old dog, new tricks. Have you tried any other formations for any period of time? I dabbled with, let me have to think what it was, I tried to do the 4-3-2-1 everybody else is using, and again, the wingers aren't there, and I'm so used to going down the wing that I got my fullback and I looked to play the ball

[00:48:41] back to my 4-4-2. So, unfortunately, I'm not adventurous, yeah. But I used to play 4-2-3-1, I gave that a little bit of a try, I have it in the rotation, but there's just something for me, it's not attacking enough for me, I find. Yeah, the one striker formation is really tough, I'll probably talk about it next week, my experiences with 4-3-2-1, but I used it pretty much all of last year, and using it, I've gone back to it this year, and I'm

[00:49:10] just really comfortable, and I think there's a lot to be said for using a system that you're comfortable with, where you know where the players are going to be, rather than keep chopping and changing and searching for something, there's a lot to be said for knowing the players, and again, in terms of changing personnel as well, I think we're all in such a hurry to constantly upgrade our team, but I think I've said this on the show before, there is a lot to be said for having players for a decent period of time to know exactly what they're good at and how they move and their kind of touches as well,

[00:49:41] so thank you very much for that, John, we will be back with player in review and formation in review of course next week on the Tuesday show. A couple of news notes to get into before we head off, of course I've mentioned the Discord and the Patreon a few times, all the fantastic benefits you get from that in terms of Discord access, you get bonus shows, you get access to exclusive tactics as well, and of course we are now starting our friendly community tournament, that starts on November 1st,

[00:50:10] everybody who's a Patreon supporter is invited into that, it's, you know, we're doing things like you're not allowed to play, except with 71 depth, no three backs, five backs, we're trying to make the conditions of it as casual and as non-sweaty as humanly possible, because Lord knows we all have to sweat enough when we're playing rivals and champs and things like that, so great group of guys, the banter is always there, whenever we've had tournaments in person or online, it's always been really friendly and fun, can't recommend it enough, so head over

[00:50:39] to footcoaching.com, footinreview.com, hit us up on our socials or patreon.com forward slash footinreview for all of the information on that, of course, if you do want to improve your game, if you are struggling in any way, we do have footcoaching, you know, tried and tested, proven, enough testimonials out there to say the benefits you can get from that, head over there, lots of different packages and options available and again, if you have any questions,

[00:51:09] just hit us up on the socials, there's no hidden tricks, there's no hidden fees, nothing like that, it's very much transparent and we're happy to have conversations with you before you sign up for exactly what you're after and how we might be able to help, head over to footcoaching.com for that, thank you very much to our show sponsors, thank you very much to all the patrons, you guys are amazing, love you very much, the show will return later in the week, I'm hoping we're going to get a training show out this week as well, I need to speak to Shaq Attack, use your market look for those of you in support, tier and higher,

[00:51:39] so hopefully that's going to come along this week as well. John, anything to add for yourself before we head off? No, just have a good time and look forward to those end of season rewards. Yeah, look, hopefully everyone gets more treats and tricks now they've removed the trickster glitch over the next few days, so everyone has a fantastic week. John, where can people follow you on social media? I am on X at Talking Foot, but I'm not as active as I used to be and you'll definitely feel me in the Discord where I'm very active at Talking Foot. Yeah,

[00:52:09] drop me a follow at Wimby or at Wimby86, it's fairly depressing with Reading content out there at the moment, so I need some cheering up for some good foot talk. So John, it's been fantastic to be on the show with you this week. John will return on, they'll probably be recording on Friday for a Saturday release for most of you out there on the main feed, so looking forward to that. Do you think, is it a new promo we've got coming Friday or is it another Centurions team? I would be surprised if it's Team 2, but you never know if it's been a brand new

[00:52:39] season, they might mix it up. Yeah, John reckons in the chat it's a Centurions team 2, so we can look forward to that one. Anyway, they will have the full low down and be analysing the new squad and all of the new SBCs, they'll review the week as well. In the meantime, just one thing for us left to do John. Drop it. We are going to drop it. Drop it.

[00:53:15] Sick of not getting the results you want in foot and of getting bored of falling foul to the same old abused mechanics? Well, why not head over to footcoaching.com and use the code INREVIEW10 for a

[00:53:45] 10% discount on all footcoaching.com services. Let the team at footcoaching.com use their advanced analysis tools to unlock your potential in Ultimate Team. Use the code INREVIEW10 for that exclusive 10% discount.