v0.7.0 - Playmaker

FMMatchLens 0.7.0 now supports Football Manager 27! Currently, only the Steam version is supported. To continue recording matches in FM26, use the 0.6.1 plugin.

The update from 0.6.0 to 0.7.0 brings more ways to analyze a match: explore what contributes to each player's rating, examine connections between players through passing networks, compare both teams' activity across the pitch on the event map, and open player match details to review individual performances through statistics, heatmaps, and movement data.

This major update also expands the rating and statistical data preserved in archives, reduces live capture overhead, and adds a new theme and saved panel preferences.

✨ Highlights

Player Rating Breakdowns

Player ratings can now be expanded to show their components. Hover over a player’s rating to see how shooting, creativity, passing, defending, and goalkeeping performances contribute to the overall rating, and click to pin the breakdown for a closer look.

Breakdowns follow the match timeline and are available during live matches and when replaying archives that contain the required data. When revisiting a goal, a mistake, or a passage of play, you can examine the rating contributions at that moment to better understand a player's performance.

The calculation also accounts for match context, on-pitch roles, and effective playing time. Based on verified data and a research model, the current breakdown largely reconstructs the match engine's rating formula.

Player Match Details and More Complete Statistics

New player match-detail cards bring together key statistics, rating contributions, position heatmaps, and movement data, making it easier to move from team analysis to individual performance.

The player statistics panel has been reorganized into overview, shooting, creativity, passing, defending, goalkeeping, and season records. Additional statistics include progressive passes, sprints, and shots from outside the box. Negative metrics, such as errors, also have updated default sorting and highlighting behavior.

A New Theme and Saved Preferences

A new Sofascore-inspired light and dark theme joins the available styles, alongside an animated brand logo and refinements to player details and statistics groups.

The dashboard now remembers commonly used settings, including panel tabs, Tactical Board event/live mode and metrics, and Pass Map and Heatmap views and filters. Your previous choices are restored when you return.

Passing Networks

The new Pass Map shows regular passing connections between players, with lines distinguishing how frequently they exchange passes. Inspect players and connections to see pass attempts, completion rates, and the number of passes between two players.

You can select a team and time range, and switch between the passing network and position heatmap.

Event Map and Attacking Focus

The Momentum card now includes an event map that groups weighted momentum events by pitch region. It shows event counts and each region's share of the team's total, making it easier to compare where both teams are most active.

Attacking-focus analysis is also integrated into the Momentum card. Together, the momentum chart, regional distribution, and attacking focus let you examine a passage of play across both time and space.

Capture Performance Improvements

Live capture reduces repeated memory queries, player identity reads, and momentum reads. It also reuses team statistics and snapshots within each capture, reducing synchronous work in the game's update callback.

📦 Archive Compatibility

This update introduces .fmlens 2.8, compared with the 2.7 format used in 0.6.0. It preserves rating inputs, rating events, tactical roles and duties, and category durations to support rating breakdowns along the timeline. The expanded player statistics are also saved with each match.

The updated dashboard continues to support archive formats 2.1–2.8, including previously recorded FM26 archives. Upgrading cannot add data that was never recorded in an older archive; the complete set of new analyses requires recordings that contain the corresponding data.

⬆️ Upgrade Instructions

1. Close the game and download FMMatchLens-plugin-v0.7.0.zip and FMMatchLens-dashboard-v0.7.0.zip.
2. Extract the plugin package into the Football Manager 27 game root, merging the BepInEx directory and overwriting the FMMatchLens plugin files. For a first-time installation, set up a compatible BepInEx 6 IL2CPP environment beforehand.
3. Extract the updated dashboard into a separate directory to avoid mixing its static assets with those from an older version.
4. Review your existing configuration, especially the paths to graphics packs such as player portraits and club badges. These may still point to FM26 resources; set them to the actual locations of the graphics you use.
5. Start the game, enter a match, and let it run briefly. Check the connection at http://127.0.0.1:16726/api/health and look for match detection and locking messages in the BepInEx log.

Verification covers match-instance pairing and archive generation on the specified Steam build, cross-checks of season statistics, and local checks for memory boundaries, rating categories, and squad handling. Comprehensive testing across all platforms, rare events, extra time, and every substitution and match-lifecycle combination is still incomplete.

Full Changelog: v0.6.0...v0.7.0