v0.5.0 - One-Touch

From v0.4.0 to v0.5.0, FMMatchLens has grown into a more focused and approachable analysis workspace, with richer player comparisons, deeper event analysis, and faster ways to move around the dashboard.

An interactive walkthrough now introduces the major workflows, while new focus layouts, keyboard shortcuts, xG Map, improved heatmaps, and more reliable match data make it easier to move from the scoreline to the details that shaped it.

✨ Highlights

Learn the Dashboard by Using It

The new interactive Explore Tour guides you through the dashboard instead of simply describing it.

It walks through timeline navigation, squad and player comparison, match data, formations, heatmaps, Tactical Board events, archive selection, appearance settings, and immersive mode. The tour responds to real interactions, moves the dashboard into the relevant state.

Put Every Screen to Work

The dashboard can now connect to a configurable backend address, making it possible to display FMMatchLens on another device across your local network.

Keep Football Manager on your main PC while a laptop, tablet, or second computer becomes a dedicated live analysis screen. The selected backend address is remembered between visits, so the extra display is ready whenever you need it.

Read Wiki: Connect-FMMatchLens-over-LAN-with-Caddy

A More Focused Analysis Workspace

Match Statistics, Formation, Heatmap, and the Tactical Board can now expand into dedicated focus layouts, with animated transitions that keep the current context easy to follow.

The scoreboard now includes a unified toolbar for fullscreen, immersive mode, the feature tour, and a shortcut reference. Centralized keyboard controls make common actions quicker, including panel focus, replay playback and seeking, and closing temporary views.

You can now:

• Focus Match Statistics, Formation, Heatmap, or the Tactical Board without losing the current analysis state
• Enter fullscreen or hide surrounding controls for a cleaner presentation
• Control archive playback and navigate key views from the keyboard

Compare Players Side by Side

Player profiles can now be pinned directly from squad avatars. Pinning players from opposing teams opens a centered comparison view with aligned attributes, radar presentation, preferred-foot ability, and clearer visual differences between the two profiles.

Profiles also expose more of the data behind a player:

• Foot ability
• Player traits
• Goalkeeper saves held, parried, and tipped

Opponent suggestions use the nearest formation position, making it faster to compare players performing similar roles.

Deeper Event and xG Analysis

The xG panel now includes an xG Map alongside the timeline.

The Tactical Board has gained clearer markers, animated event reveals, refined hover details, grouped legends, and team or individual player filters. Native Football Manager events now distinguish passes, crosses, saves, fouls, key tackles, penalties, own goals, and cards more accurately.

Sharper, Faster Heatmaps

Heatmaps now use a higher-resolution density field. The result preserves more spatial detail, avoids a small number of extreme cells flattening the rest of the map, and reduces temporary allocations for recent-period views. The new focus layout gives the pitch more room when detailed inspection matters.

More Complete and Reliable Match Context

Competition names, logos, and colors are now captured and displayed in archive and timeline presentation. Newgen portraits are resolved from common facepack r-{UID} resource paths.

The plugin now builds match rosters from each team's own player table instead of relying on a combined match table. This makes home and away assignment, player identity, and event-to-player linking more reliable.

📦 Archive Compatibility

v0.5.0 uses .fmlens archive format 2.6 and continues to read archives created with earlier 2.x versions, including v0.4.0 archives.

Format 2.6 adds goalkeeper saves held, parried, and tipped; competition metadata; 64-bit player traits; and first- and second-half team shot totals. Older archives still replay normally, with fields that were not recorded left unavailable or defaulted safely by the dashboard.

Archives written by v0.5.0 require a v0.5.0 or newer dashboard because older releases do not understand the 2.6 metadata and player-stat extensions.

⬆️ Upgrade Instructions

Download and update both of the following packages:

• FMMatchLens-plugin-v0.5.0.zip
• FMMatchLens-dashboard-v0.5.0.zip

Extract the plugin archive into the Football Manager 2026 game root and allow it to overwrite the existing FMMatchLens files.

It is recommended to extract the new dashboard into a separate directory so that its assets files are not mixed with files from an older version.

Full Changelog: v0.4.0...v0.5.0