Sports scientist here. I have been playing Championship Manager/Football Manager series since 2003 and tried my hands on roughly all installments of the game so far, starting with CM 4, 03/04, finally CM 5 which did not impress me, so I switched to FM 2005 and have been an avid follower of the Football Manager series since then.
So what’s this blog about? Well, Football Manager obviously. I intend to document my various career gameplays here, what works for me, what doesn’t, what’s good about the game, what’s bad about the match engine and whatnot.
My playstyle may hugely differ from the average FM player, so here’s a list of what I generally tend to do/not do:
TENDS TO
- Put great importance on training; micromanage coach assignments and adjust sessions to suit opponents
- Bring in players that suit preferred tactics
- Play primarily a possession based 4-2-3-1 style
- Play defensive/counter attacking football to protect a lead/against stronger teams
- Prefer young players with potential
- Use touchline shouts for underperforming players
TENDS NOT TO
- Bring in star players
- Bring in inconsistent/injury prone players
- Use loan market
- Rely on player match ratings to substitute players
In general I really like to acquire young players with huge potential and see them develop into stars. The transfer market is pretty much more than half the fun I get from this game. As such, I generally prefer to play leagues with less strict rules about foreign player count.
Another thing I like to do is to actually watch matches for the full duration – unless it is already a convincing lead. Although the match engine is still far from perfect, crosses almost never connecting and whatnot, I feel that this way I can know more about a player’s performance than the mere match rating the game gives me, and also what does work and especially does not work and thus my presumptions about the match turn out to be wrong – I really love to correct myself during the game in such cases, even if this happens in the opening minutes.
In this regard I find that commentary or even key highlights don’t work out for me in that, when I am randomly presented a shot on goal at say, minute 3 of a match, I am unable to understand what actually got me there – what I did right, or what my opponent did wrong. And more importantly – how can I further use this opportunity to strike my opponent more.
So – I hope we will all learn something new about the game in this blog. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
