So when I bought Football Manager for the first time back in 2015 and played the shit out of it, I decided that I'd limit myself to buying once every 4 years, enough time for the games' new iterations to go through a few, and make it feel different, allow it all to go one full international cycle, and just generally make it feel fresh, as my older copy starts becoming more and more out of touch with reality.

 

And I think the time has come and I'm going to do it, now it's gone on its pretty predictable summer sale cycle.

 

So to anyone out there who's playing it already, what's the main changes since? I've heard about Brexit possibilities and social media being added which sounds cool for the game's immersion prospects but not much about the actual gameplay bits.

 

Who to play? How do you actually git gud? I've played a lot but my tactics are.. pretty bad.

 

 

In the older games normally played 3-5-2. Not played the newer ones really.

I used to be obsessed with the 2008 version back in the day! Bought the 2010 version too but it never really got me like the older one did so I went back to it! I feel like FM is such a black hole for time that I'm scared to buy a new version these days as I'm so much busier than I was when I was 12/13.

Started playing this in the 90s with Championship Manager 1997 which was unreal, the newer ones haven't had me as excited!

Same Steve, it's been a few months since I last played FM, will probably go on at some point this week to take a screenshot of my Blyth Spartans save. ^_^

The days of Championship Manager 3 and that 42-40 game between Cambridge and Darlington using rush goalies.

So after fooling around in FM19 for a bit playing Truro City (another reason I got this one as they've now been relegated from the Conference South and I have no idea when I'll next get the chance to pick them), the thing I like most that's an improvement over FM15 is that all the tactics and formations have been given explanatory tooltips so I know what I'm doing as someone who never watches club football or talks about the strategies. Big difference between picking a football formation and style at random and being told that '4-1-3-2 works well with a tiki-taka style of play' or whatever. Before I was just mostly following a flawed binary of direct football = attacking and short passing football = control possession, and never being sure which suited my team better, outside of the age old adage that 'thou shalt not play anything but a 4-4-2 at lower levels, the players won't get it otherwise'.

 

I'm probably never going to make Truro City good (my greatest hits are Exeter to the Championship and Sutton to League 1, at which point, both times, my players promptly caved and all but died), so messing with a club with a £4.5k wage budget is never going to work, but I'll probably find the time for a casual campaign of an interesting club here and there. Once I manage to download sortioutsi's assets to make it all look pretty, the thing I love most is having this pretty spreadsheet of an imaginary footballing world and the off-brand badges for, this time, literally all of the Premier League but Watford really make me mad.

 

maybe I'll actually have a good time managing outside of England too, I've done some things in Albania before (the start of an abortive 'alphabet challenge') but I fear things like Belgium's league cleaving system.

BUMP

 

First football management game I got was Championship Manager 3, that was a good game. Football Manager took it up a gear when 2005 came out.