We've updated several parts of the fixture request system, including league matchmaking, the Assistant Manager and cup matches.
The Assistant Manager is now activated when a club hasn't connected to a match for more than seven days, rather than when it hasn't logged in. This allows many more human-managed clubs to continue participating in matchmaking. When your Assistant Manager is active, you'll see a notification in the top-right corner of the home screen.
Together with improvements to the matchmaking system, this means many more human-managed clubs are available when looking for opponents. Overall, you should generally find matches more quickly, play against bot teams less often, and be matched against human-managed clubs more frequently.
As human-managed clubs are generally more challenging than bot teams, we expect clubs will, on average, find it harder to earn as many league points as they have in recent seasons.
Away managers also now have their own opportunity to start cup matches before they auto-resolve if the home manager chooses not to.
We'll be monitoring how these changes perform and refining the system where needed.