Your captain, and the four set-piece takers

There are five appointments in ManageFC that most managers never touch after the first week: the captain's armband and four set-piece duties. We put them in the game for a reason — none of them will rescue a bad team, all of them cost nothing, and they're the kind of free that shows up in the score.

The armband

We made the captain's bonus honest and small: a captain who is on the pitch gives the whole side a 1.5% force bonus for the match, and one with leadership 15 or higher adds a further +0.6 to team morale after every result. The catch is the phrase "on the pitch" — your captain gives you nothing from the bench or the treatment room. Before every fixture, check that he's fit, rested and starting; if not, either move the armband for the day or accept that you're playing without the bonus.

It's also worth knowing what a captain is not, because we get asked a lot: there's no hidden tactical role, no dressing-room speech, no domino effect on other players' ratings. It's 1.5% and a morale trickle, applied every single match, for the cost of one dropdown.

The four takers

Set pieces are configured on the Tactics screen, in the Set Pieces tab. Four duties, four slots: penalty taker, left corner taker, right corner taker, free-kick taker. Set all four yourself, because the auto-pick reads attributes and nothing else — it doesn't know that your veteran wants the ball or that your new signing has the better nerve.

A few engine details that change how you should fill the slots — the ones you can't see on the screen:

• The engine reads the left corner taker first and only falls back to the right one. Treat the right slot as cover, not a genuine second option.
• If a nominated taker is not on the pitch — injured, suspended or rested — we fall back to the best available player by the same attributes. Better than nothing; never as good as your man out there.
• Penalties are driven by finishing, composure and decisions. An average taker against an average keeper converts roughly half; composure and condition swing the number more than raw finishing does.

The routines matter too

In the same tab you pick a corner routine and a free-kick routine, and unlike the takers these apply on both sides of the ball. Two numbers from our table, because they settle the argument:

• Free kick — direct is the best routine of the three, on both how often it becomes a shot and the quality of that shot. The short option deliberately halves the threat.
• Corner — penalty spot is the strongest corner routine overall; far post rewards a tall defender arriving late, near post a quick aerial attacker. A short corner is a possession play, not a goalscoring one.

Your monthly five-minute job

After every transfer window, and after any injury that keeps a first-choice taker out, re-open the Specialists panel and re-check all four slots. That's the whole maintenance regime — five appointments, five checks, and the occasional re-check when someone goes down.

The numbers behind every routine are in the wiki's Set pieces article. If you want to know how the captain's morale bonus fits the bigger picture, read Morale — causes, effects and recovery, and the guide's matchday page shows where these choices sit in the pre-match routine.