Thanks for stopping by to read my latest blog update. It’s been a strange but eventful year on Fuller FM, and I thought I’d take some time out to keep you abreast of recent developments.
In this post, I will quickly summarise the various Football Manager and Championship Manager series I’ve written since last autumn. I’ll also discuss some troubles I’ve had away from the blog before looking ahead to the future.
MY EXPERIENCES WITH FM20
I’ll start this post by writing about why there hasn’t been much Football Manager 2020 content in the blog.
Traditionally, I’ve only bought a new version of Football Manager every two years, with the odd exception. I usually buy the odd-numbered versions and skip the even-numbered ones, though I will try the six-month demo at least when it comes to the latter.
So I played the demo, taking over a Birmingham side who would soon be so entranced by teenage midfielder Jude Bellingham that they retired his squad number after he emigrated to Germany. Despite a shocking start which included that own goal at Nottingham Forest, I led the Blues up to 14th at the halfway stage of the season, when the demo ended. (City finished 20th in real-life.)
I gave my thoughts on FM20 as a game in this blog post, detailing my likes and dislikes. I was a fan of the new development centre and the quality-of-life improvements to the graphics engine. I also appreciated that assistant managers now gave more contextual feedback than just “we are being overrun in midfield”.
I was less impressed by the match engine. I didn’t like how wide attackers would often shoot from very difficult angles instead of finding an open team-mate. That was a common complaint with many FMers, as was the high number of missed one-on-ones. While some users seemed to overplay this issue (one-on-ones aren’t always likely to result in goals), I could understand their concerns.
And you know the mantra “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? Well, that perhaps didn’t apply to some of those who designed FM20’s user interface. For example, making first-team players available for reserve matches was a simple, streamlined process on FM19 – but the same screen on FM20 presented me with a confusing, convoluted mess.
In conclusion, I decided that it was not worth me buying FM20… but that wasn’t my final experience with this year’s game.
Something pretty serious started happening early this year, and by March, many of us were being asked to stay indoors and socially distance (not exactly a big ask of me!). Video gaming became much more popular in this ‘new world’, and Sports Interactive generously made FM20 free to play for a fortnight.
I took advantage of this offer and began a short-term challenge. I holidayed through the first half of a Premier League season and took charge of the team that was bottom at Christmas.
That meant I was given the aim of saving Burnley from relegation in a four-part blog story that I imaginatively named “Saving Burnley”. With the help of some old friends from a previous series, I managed to steer the Clarets from 20th place to… well, you can probably guess what happened next.
Though this was my shortest FM story to date, it seems to have been quite popular. As far as story posts go, SB’s opening chapter has the second-most views in Fuller FM history, eclipsed only by Season 2, Part 2 of “Floreat Salopia” (your guess is as good as mine).
Despite somewhat enjoying my Burnley experience, I still didn’t love FM20 as much as I loved FM19. The free fortnight ended on 1 April (sadly, for some of us, that was not a joke), and I haven’t touched the game since. Instead, I’ve been focussing my blogging efforts elsewhere.
MY RETRO SERIES
In the absence of regular FM20 content, I’ve mainly written about earlier titles in Sports Interactive’s franchise during this game cycle.
The game I’ve revisited most over the last year has been Championship Manager 99/00, which celebrated its 20th anniversary. This was the first full version of the original series I ever played, having previously experienced the Championship Manager 3 demo as an 8-year-old in 1999.
The first CM99/00 story I wrote this season was “Now Or Neverkusen”. I took charge of a Bayer Leverkusen side who, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, were gallant runners-up in several competitions without ever getting to lift a trophy. I had three eventful seasons in Germany, reacquainting myself with several legendary players from that era.
I returned to CM99/00 in the summer with “Fitba’s Coming Home” – a story about my experience managing Scotland’s national team at the point when they’d stopped qualifying for tournaments. Not only did I reverse some of the damage inflicted over the past 20 years, but I led the Tartan Army all the way until Euro 2008, which Scotland co-hosted with Wales.
There was also a two-part mini-series looking at the careers of several CM99/00 cult icons, plus a couple more standalone posts.
I’ve considered doing something similar around Championship Manager 00/01 in the next game cycle to mark that title’s 20th birthday… but I’ll talk about that later in this post.
There was one other big series on Fuller FM this year. In “The Counties Championship”, I imagined a scenario where England’s best players were separated into teams representing the counties where they were born and/or raised. For example, Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling would link up for North London, while Jordans Henderson and Pickford joined forces for Tyne & Wear in the north-east.
The 48 county teams were divided into four regional groups. The top four counties in each division progressed to the play-offs, with the grand final at Wembley deciding which county had the best team. There was also an FA Cup-style knockout competition called the County Cup, giving teams a second opportunity to claim silverware.
I ran this experiment on Football Manager 2017, mainly because the database files I wanted to use wouldn’t work at all on Football Manager 2019. I would obviously have preferred running this on FM19 with updated squads, but I’ve also always liked FM17, even if it doesn’t quite match up to the newer titles (in my opinion).
In terms of reader numbers, this was the least popular series I’ve ever produced in nearly two years of Fuller FM. It did have a small and devoted fanbase, though, which was good enough for me. This was just a labour of love – a chance to try something very different from the usual road-to-glory or journeyman FM stories.
TWITTER TROUBLES
Now I want to talk honestly about some stuff away from the blog. If you’ve been following me on Twitter for a while, you’ll probably know that I am on the autistic spectrum. I first wrote in April about living with Asperger’s – a condition which massively impacts my social skills and how I see the world.
Being on the spectrum, I sometimes struggle to keep my emotions in check – and letting them spill over on the internet isn’t always the best idea. It certainly wasn’t a good idea on the Sunday night after the Premier League season ended, when I had my worst episode on Twitter to date.
I’d retweeted another user’s poll asking which was the best Football Manager game (excluding FM20). I stated that I’d voted for FM19, while also pointing out several reasons why FM17’s match engine perhaps wasn’t the best.
The other fella clearly didn’t agree with my reasoning. Some back-and-forth continued until I said, “let’s just agree to disagree”, and he called me one of the oddest people he’d ever been in contact with. At that point, I decided to block him… but not before I made a very stupid suggestion about his mental wellbeing.
I quickly realised what I’d done and deleted the message, but not before it was shared by the user and some other people in the FM community. I then called out a couple of users who’d written some particularly rude things about me, which only fanned the flames. About 15 minutes later, I received a vile email from the user I’d just had an argument with.
After briefly considering quitting Twitter altogether, I instead calmed myself down and managed to resolve the conflict. I unblocked him at his request, we both apologised for overstepping the mark, and we agreed to move on.
By then, though, the damage had been done. I reckon I lost 10 Twitter followers that night alone, including some people that I had considered good friends in the FM community. I’m deeply sorry for any offence my comments caused and am now doing my utmost to regain the trust of those who had lost faith in me.
Like many video games, Football Manager brings out the best in people – but it can also bring out the worst, even when they’re not playing it. That probably applies to me. As much as I enjoy playing other games such as Motorsport Manager (another Sega publication) and Age of Empires II, they can’t get me as worked up as FM does.
Considering I haven’t played FM20 outside of the demo and the free fortnight, it’d be fair to say that I’m very outspoken about the game. While I didn’t enjoy this year’s game that much, I’ve been quick to refute allegations that it’s just FM19.5 or that SI don’t care about their fanbase.
I’ve also been known to regularly step in and try to debunk some Football Manager myths. After all, I have an occasional mini-series on this blog called FM Mythbusting, in which I’ve previously talked about being “FMed” and youth intakes. I’ve even been working on a third installment, which will hopefully be ready for publication soon.
So yeah, I can understand why some people would see me as being obnoxious, or even just a little odd. I don’t ever want to use my autism as an excuse for some of my worst traits (which I’m trying very hard to address), but I’d appreciate it if more people at least understood why I sometimes act the way I do.
WHAT’S NEXT?
This has been a somewhat difficult – and very different – second season here at Fuller FM. My decision to largely skip FM20 meant that the blog hasn’t grown as much in the past 10 months as some other Football Manager blogs have.
By far my most popular post was the Mythbusting youth intakes one, which has had over 3,500 views since its publication in April. My Burnley mini-series has also enjoyed plenty of views, but nearly all my other posts were significantly less popular.
There are several posts in my FM17 Counties Championship series that still have single-figure view numbers. As much as I enjoyed making this, the interest in past Football Managers just isn’t there, so I won’t bother with them anymore blogging-wise. The next time I want to do an ambitious FM project, it’ll be on the most recent game.
There is still plenty of interest when it comes to the original Championship Manager series. While CM97/98 and CM01/02 are streets ahead of the other games in terms of popularity, I still had a decent readership whenever I revisited CM99/00.
As previously mentioned, I would love to do a “CM00/01 Revisited” series – but if I do, it won’t be until early next year. I’m also thinking of only writing one career story on that game, plus some extra posts looking at classic players and whatnot. As ever, if any of you have any ideas as to what I could cover, I’m all ears.
Unlike CM99/00 Revisited this year, CM00/01 Revisited would be a secondary project for me in the next game cycle. My focus will be very much on Football Manager 2021 once that game is released (the word is that it’ll likely come out later than usual due to you-know-what).
My third season as an FM blogger will be make-or-break for me. I’ve learned some valuable lessons over the last two years and want to put them to good use and take this blog to the next level.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean a return to the early days, when I would churn out five chapters of my FM19 Fiorentina story in a week. Instead, there will be a steady stream of articles – a healthy mixture of FM playthroughs, guides and opinion pieces, plus the occasional review of other football computer games.
Also, for the first time, I may be open to the idea of potentially hosting other writers’ work. If you’re interested in that, you can contact me by tweeting me @Fuller_FM or using the contact form here.
While I’m at it, I’d like to to promote some of the FM blogs I’ve enjoyed reading the most this year. First on my list is the stalwart that is The Lutterworth Fox, whose 40-year journeyman challenge – beginning with Haugesund in Norway – has been truly captivating from start to finish.
FM Stag has written his own journeyman career (stacked with plenty of humour and pop culture references), as well as a short retro story with Manchester United on CM03/04. Then there’s From The Cheap Seats, where you’ll find stories from some of the most creative and talented writers on the Sports Interactive forums (and beyond).
So… I think that covers everything for now. Thanks to all of you who’ve stopped by during FM20’s life cycle, and I hope to see you again soon…
Fuller FM 
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