FM23 players have waited an age for the Football Manager 2023 Winter Update, but Sports Interactive has finally released the patch. This patch has a new name for Football Manager 2023, the "main data update", and serves to bring a host of improvements to the match day experience and a huge amount of database updates.
Sports Interactive's gameplay changes will impact every save, but if you want to have Jorginho at Arsenal or Mykhailo Mudryk at Chelsea you will need to start a new save to fully utilize all the database changes.
Football Manager 2023 Main Data Update Now Available
SI is notoriously quiet about their updates, and the developer made fans wait a bit longer than usual this year.
The big winter update has traditionally dropped at the end of February as transfer windows wrap up around the world. This year the newly minted main data update arrived on 2 March 2023 across all platforms.
The new update comes in at 2.14 GB on Steam, which is quite hefty for Football Manager.
What Is In The Main Data Update?
Per a tweeted video from Sports Interactive, this update will cover a lot of things.
Along with bringing the January transfers into the game, there is also data updates that brings a slash to Cristiano Ronaldo's ability and attribute improvements for Bukayo Saka.
There are also "match and gameday enhancements". That's quite a broad term, but the patch notes detail exactly what's changing. It shouldn't impact your tactics too much, but might make some more exotic systems feasible within the match engine.
There are also stability fixes which should mean far fewer crash dumps. Overall this is the biggest update to the game we've had in a long time and probably the last one we will get.
Patch notes
SI has said that the changes in update 23.3 are not limited to the following, but that these are the main changes.
- Stability and crash fixes
- Fixes to reduce mistakes from bad touches in certain areas of the pitch
- Fixes to defenders not preparing correctly for crosses in certain situations
Improvements to defender reaction to long through balls - Tweaks to make attacking players move quicker to support counter-attacks
- Improvements to how AI managers use different midfield role combinations
- Improvements to central defender and defensive midfielder positioning from long goal kicks
- Improvements to how attacking wide players track back when defending
- Fixes for defending wide indirect free kicks at the edge of the area
- 'Header won' statistic now only counts contested headers
- Improvements to the Recruitment Focus logic
- Fixed cases of reserve or youth team tactics appearing blank in the Development Centre
- Tweaks to development loans for AI teams
- Improvements to fixture scheduling, particularly the frequency of consecutive home or away games
- Updated substitution rules across various competitions