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Football Manager 2020 – The Long Game

Football Manager 2020 – The Long Game

It’s all about playing the long game these days with Football Manager. For some players, it always has been that way, but this years edition adds so many more reasons to get stuck in for the long haul. Yes, there will always be the allure of jumping into the boots of a Klopp or Guardiola and splashing the cash to build a dream team for one season, but starting from the bottom is a more attractive proposition in Football Manager 2020 than ever before.

I have of course been playing in the Welsh leagues which, thanks to the additions of the lower tier Cymru South and Cymru North present a viable long-term career path without resorting to the dark arts of the Editor. It means my Welsh football aspirations are no longer limited to trying to take The New Saints to Champions League glory, or turning Cardiff Met Uni into serious title challengers. Now, I can take a club from the bottom and take them to the top. Albeit with only one promotion required to get there. But hey, all is fair in love and Football Manager.

I bounced between a few clubs initially as I strived to find a lower Welsh league team with a Club Vision, one of the major new features of the game. It’s worth noting that not many lower league clubs have a strong vision at the start of a new save in Football Manager, but this will start to evolve over the seasons.

The Development Centre for the big clubs is a rich source of information.

I chose Haverfordwest to start my long term career, and club starting with a vision of achieving a top half of the table finish in the Cymru South and to keep the wage budget under control. Simple and standard enough, but it gave me hope that I could make something of my career tootling around the lower reaches of the Welsh game. Being welcomed to the club with a 3D boardroom for a backdrop was a nice touch, even if it was looking a bit rough around the edges. Liverpool this isn’t.

My first season was rough, some poor decision making in the transfer market left the team fighting a relegation battle in the second half of the year. Poor monthly performance reviews were a regular occurrence. Previous editions would have a very high level monthly report of “the board are delighted with your performance”, along with an occasional news message that you have received a vote of confidence if things really aren’t going your way. This time around, your monthly reviews are tied into the club vision and take into account board and fan opinions of recent matches, transfers, tactics and even the squad itself. An A to F rating gives you a feeling for how things are going, but regularly receiving match ratings of D when scrapping a draw away to the team at the top are pretty tough to see.

While some of this feedback doesn’t feel fully joined up, your board interactions do add a new dynamic to the game. During a successful second season, I found myself fighting for the title and sole promotion spot, despite having a seasonal objective of achieving a top half finish. It was here that the board asked me if I wanted to change my expectations but edging on the side of caution I kept them low.

The club vision for Cardiff…so much going on!

It made winning the Cymru South, and promotion to the big leagues more rewarding. With promotion confirmed, an updated five year vision of becoming an established Cymru Premier club felt reasonable. I also threw in a request for the club to turn fully professional, a request which was surprisingly accepted but which opened more avenues of the playing time pathway and interlinked player development centre.

Being able to offer full-time profession contracts allows you the granular control over playing time expectations. If you have a real star in youth team as reported in the new development centre you can offer them a long-term pathway to becoming a Star Play, slowly increasing their promised playing time as the seasons go by. The development centre is a revamped approach to managing your youth teams, with user friendly overview of your young talent that are pushing for a first team spot.

Turning professional was a blessing in that I was able to secure the services of my key players, but thanks to some short-sighted management of staff responsibilities, I ended up with my entire youth squad being handed full-time contracts at £100 p/w. Small change for big clubs, but a move which immediately sent me £3k over my wage budget. A reminder that new features are all well and good, but if you don’t pay attention to who is doing what in your backroom staff, you can find yourself in a mess.

In an ideal world, the board would have reconsidered my budgets once they turned the club professional, but sadly not everything can come together as you might want. Even after a successful first season in the Cymru Premier (along European qualification), the club culture hadn’t yet evolved beyond “strive to make progress on and off the pitch”. I’d expect this to start changing as the game goes on (if my poor financial management doesn’t get me sacked) and my performances continue to improve, allowing me to really get stuck into the longer-term youth development.

You know me, I love the bars and charts of this game…here I spied on The New Saints

Not all small teams have such limited ambitions. By adding a new manager with The New Saints early in my fourth in-game season, the club culture called for nobody over the age of 30 to be signed, along with a goal for the end of the next season to have the best youth system in the country. Looking at a club like Cardiff they have a three-year plan to earn promotion to the Premier Division, and a five year plan to build on that promotion.

Combining the Club Vision with playing time pathways and the development centre adds massive amount to Football Manager. No longer are you looking for your own individual year-on-year success or setting personal long-term objectives. Having these goals baked into core of the club set such a much needed focus on the long game.

If you normally struggle to keep a career going for a long time, Football Manager 2020 might get you playing deeper and longer than ever. This isn’t the beautiful game anymore, it’s The Long Game.

 

Brexit Debuts in Football Manager 2017

Brexit Debuts in Football Manager 2017

The biggest political event of the year so far in British politics, Brexit, will make its debut in Football Manager 2017, the first known footballing appearance for this political event. As revealed in The Telegraph, Sports Interactive, led by studio head Miles Jacobson have been busy modelling how Brexit might impact upon the footballing world, and you will feel some impact on your games.

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Football Manager 2015 – It Gets Personal November 7th

Football Manager 2015 – It Gets Personal November 7th

This past week was a big one for fans of Football Manager, a documentary on the game was released in select cinemas across the UK, a release date was confirmed (November 7th for those who didn’t read the title of the post) and a massive amount of new features and improvements have been revealed. Good times indeed.

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The Long Wait Begins – Football Manager 2015 Announced

The Long Wait Begins – Football Manager 2015 Announced

Earlier today I was talking with a colleague at work about the upcoming start of the domestic football season. Yes, the World Cup was brilliant and yes, the Champions League qualifying rounds have been going for a few weeks, but the start of the domestic season is something else. It also got me to start thinking…”when will the new Football Manager be announced? It is normally at this time of the year isn’t it?” And lo, when I go home and checked my emails, word was with me that the game had indeed been announced today.

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Football Manager 2014 – The Verdict

Football Manager 2014 – The Verdict

It took me a while to get into Football Manager 2014 this year, but once I did, everything fell into place. I think part of the problem was that this year the game is perhaps lacking the one stand out feature that is an easy focal point of the game.Recent seasons have seen additions like Dynamic League Reputation, the ability to add and remove leagues during a saved game and of course we saw the release last year of the Classic mode.

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Football Manager 2012 Updated also Save 60%

Football Manager 2012 Updated also Save 60%

Football Manager 2012 has just received its regular January Transfer Update along with a massive 60% discount on Steam, at just £8 this is an essential purchase. Even better, if you already own the game and want to gift it to a friend, that will set you back £4.99. This offer ends Friday at 18:00GMT.

The new update, fully detailed here features a number of bug fixes to go along with the new database which features all the January transfers. I just hope it solves my issues with the Welsh league. Time to boot it up and check it out, can’t wait.

Football Manager 2012 Beats The Pirates – Sells Well

Football Manager 2012 Beats The Pirates – Sells Well

Miles Jacobson, boss of Football Manager 2012 developers Sports Interactive has been talking to Eurogamer about the success of using Steam authentication for their latest title. The headline messages from Mile’s are that the games wasn’t cracked for pirates until 10 days after release and that Sports Interactive have seen double-digit year-on-year growth for the series.

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