The same fundamental issues that have plagued the game ever since i started playing are still present here. There is very little if at all any improvement outside of the match engine and a surprising amount of bugs.
The Match Engine is fun though and has gotten much better in this and the last years version. Nonetheless it is quite frustrating to face the same issues every year, that make the game far too easy and predictable for the human player over the long term.

This will likely be by far my least played Football Manager ever since i got addicted 13 years ago, as i had a nice, satisfying bunch of saves in 2023 and am now looking forward to seeing their first game made in Unity.

I also wouldnt recommend this game for a newbie. The game is so cluttered, the menus so unintuitive and there is so much unneccessary stuff thats thrown at you, that a new player, if he cares about understanding the game will likely need 5 hours of setting his team up before even reaching match day 1.
Me personally, i, by now, holiday 60% of the season, from match day to match day, to emulate the feeling of having a reasonably paced football manager sim that doesnt bother with incessant spam in my mail ordner, for things that could be much more eleganty handled without reducing the complexity of the simulation.

Because of these complaints, and because i expected the last iteration of this generations engine to be a polished masterpiece version, i only give 3.5 stars.
Normally each of these games deserves at least 4 stars, as the scope, realism and dynamic quality of the huge database and the beautiful match engine, that even if it fails in many ways to copy real football, gets so much closer than anything else that has ever tried, make a deep engagement with the game worth hundreds of hours that will create memories that will burn themselves into your mind. And a lot of the hate the community gives to the developers is unwarranted and based on ignorance (It's always the games fault!)
But yeah, i had hoped for a better good-bye.