It’s almost time, folks! After what feels like an eternity, the Football Manager 2021 beta is expected to drop any moment now, which means we’ll soon be falling in love with our favourite game all over again.
With excitement levels now as high as they will be when they start allowing fans back into stadiums, I am now ready to formally announce my plans for FM21’s game cycle. As usual, I’m planning to have a short-term beta save, and then I will begin a long-term career after the game is officially released on 24 November.
MY FM21 BETA SAVE (Twitter-only)
For my first save on the new game, I will be taking charge of one of the most exciting emerging powers in European football. I’m making the short-ish journey across the English Channel and into France – Brittany, to be exact.
Stade Rennais – or Rennes for short – were founder members of France’s first professional football league in 1932 but spent much of the next 60 years yo-yoing between Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. After focussing on developing youngsters such as forward Sylvain Wiltord and midfielder Ulrich Le Pen in the 1990s, they returned to the top flight in 1994 and have stayed there since.
A takeover by retail billionaire François Pinault in 1998 gave them even more stability as they headed into the new millennium. A successful youth system was complemented by shrewd foreign signings like Petr Čech, Kim Källström and Alexander Frei, who brought regular European football to Roazhon Park.
A lean spell followed in the mid-2010s, despite the emergence of a new striking sensation in Barcelona-bound Ousmane Dembélé. ‘Les Rouge et Noir’ roared back to life in 2017/2018, as ex-France midfielder (and future Nottingham Forest boss) Sabri Lamouchi led them to a 5th-place finish. However, things went sour in the league the following season, and Lamouchi was sacked.
New manager Julien Stéphan turned their fortunes around quickly, leading them into the 2019 Coupe de France Final. Despite trailing Paris Saint-Germain 2-0 after 21 minutes, Rennes eventually pulled it back to 2-2 before stunning the oil-rich Parisiens 6-5 on penalties. That brought them their third Coupe success, after previous victories in 1965 and 1971, and four Final defeats.
The boys in red-and-black were better than ever in 2019/2020. With 16-year-old midfield wonderkid Eduardo Camavinga bursting onto the scene, Rennes achieved their best ever finish in a truncated Ligue 1 season. Finishing in 3rd place (only behind runaway leaders PSG and runners-up Marseille), they qualified for the Champions League for the first time in their history.
And so we come to the present day. Rennes kept hold of most of their key men this summer, such as Camavinga, left-back Faitout Maouassa, and top scorer Mbaye Niang [above]. Their only major losses were goalkeeper Edouard Mendy and winger Raphinha, who went to Chelsea and Leeds respectively for big money.
Indeed, they have arguably strengthened during the summer transfer window. The arrival of Lyon’s Martin Terrier has added more bite to their attack, while hopes are high for 18-year-old Belgium forward Jérémy Doku. In defence, Italy centre-half Daniele Rugani and Brazilian left-back Dalbert have each arrived on loan from Serie A.
The situation, then, is looking pretty rosy as I take over the Rennes reins from Stephan. My main goal for the next few seasons is to consolidate their status as a top-three Ligue 1 side while continuing to make use of the academy. And who knows, maybe one day we’ll be ready to challenge PSG for what would be a first league championship in the club’s history.
In Europe, my target will be to reach the Champions League knockout rounds – or, alternatively, win the Europa League. I couldn’t achieve either of those goals during my brief, failed stint at Sporting CP on FM20, so continental success in France would go some way to making amends.
However, I will not be blogging about my Rennes save here. For starters, that’s been done before – on FM20, in fact, by the brilliant Oliver Jensen.
Instead, I will post regular updates on Twitter using the hashtag #RuleBretagne. This will just be a two- or three-season warm-up save before I dive into my main blog career at around Christmas time.
MY FM21 BLOG CAREER
I’ve been blogging about Football Manager for two years now, and regular readers will know that many of my stories have followed a similar pattern. I usually start off with these grand plans to build up a mediocre team into this big domestic and/or continental force… but then I hit a wall, things quickly go wrong, and the save ends after only a few seasons.
On FM19, my Shrewsbury team lost in the League One Play-Off Semi Finals for three seasons in a row. My next career in Norway also ended in heartache, as after leading Lyn 1896 to two promotions, we were relegated from the Eliteserien at the end of our first season there.
And then there was my FM20 career with Sporting. To paraphrase Sven-Göran Eriksson, “First season, good. Second season, not so good.”
I’m sure a few of you feel frustrated after getting into one of my blog stories, only for it to abruptly end in failure after only a few seasons. I completely understand. I’ve felt the same way myself after reading other FM blog careers that have been cut short.
So for FM21, I’m not doing any more one-club saves that fizzle out before they’ve really begun. Instead, I’ll be doing something very different…
That’s right, folks! I’m launching a European journeyman save!
For those who don’t know, a Football Manager ‘journeyman’ career is where you start unemployed with no badges and minimal experience. Your first job will typically be a semi-professional lower-league team in a footballing backwater (e.g. Belarus, Gibraltar or Scotland). You’ll then have to work hard to build that team up before getting a better job elsewhere (in other words, you’re not Andrea Pirlo).
This will be my first ever ‘official’ journeyman career. I’ve had careers that started off as one-team saves before taking me elsewhere (on FM13, I spent 10 years at Romford before leading Dagenham & Redbridge from non-league to Champions League). But this will be the first time I’ve ever begun a career where I’m not tying myself to a single club, and where I’m literally starting from zero.
I’m also laying down some ground rules which I must stick to:
- I will have no coaching badges and Sunday League playing experience at the start.
- I will start my career in the British Isles, but NOT in England. That means my first job will be in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland.
- I cannot resign or look for another job until I have completed at least one full season at my present club. (Of course, I can be sacked before completing a full season.)
- I can manage a maximum of TWO clubs in the same country during my career.
- I cannot take a job in England until I have won a top-flight league championship in another country.
- I can manage a national team at the same time as a club team, but ONLY if it is realistic to keep both jobs. (For example, it wouldn’t be realistic for me to manage the Iceland national team alongside a Turkish club team.)
- Where possible, I will look to take at least one staff member and one player from one club to the next, to maintain some continuity.
As if I wasn’t clear enough already, this will be a long-term save that will last me until at least the end of FM21’s life cycle. Things will almost certainly go horribly wrong at some point, but I’ll carry on regardless, even if it means having to rebuild my career with another team.
ALSO COMING SOON…
My journeyman career won’t be starting for a while yet, but there will still be some FM21 blog content on here before that kicks off.
During FM19, I wrote some guides on a number of Football Manager topics. Amongst other things, I explained how to take in-game screenshots, keep your save files safe and secure, and also how to change stadium and player names without using the editor. I’ll be putting out more of those guides for FM21, particularly during the first few weeks.
I’ve already started planning two of these guide posts. One will give you some tips on setting up a new save game (i.e. how many leagues to load, which leagues to load, and the database size). Another will explain how I plan my pre-season in terms of friendly matches and training regimes.
My ‘FM Mythbusting’ series might continue into the new game – or it might not. As popular as my previous posts about “being FMed” and ‘rubbish’ youth intakes were, busting other big Football Manager myths has proven more difficult.
Basically, I have often fallen foul of Brandolini’s law, which states, “The amount of energy needed to refute balderdash is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” (It doesn’t actually use the word “balderdash”, but Fuller FM is a family-friendly blog. I’ve never used foul language on this blog, and I don’t plan to start now.)
I haven’t forgotten those of you who like to read my retro Championship Manager content. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, I’ll be revisiting Championship Manager 00/01 in a new weekly series starting early next year.
I’m also hoping to continue my occasional football management game reviews. I definitely want to look at the new Club Soccer Director and Soccer Manager games over the coming months, as well as some classic titles from the 1990s and early 2000s. But anyway, back to FM21…
Other than blogging, I will also be uploading content onto the Steam Workshop. For FM16, FM17 and FM19, I released an ‘International Team Competition Histories’ mod, which adds comprehensive competition history data to all national teams. I will be releasing a new version of that mod for FM21 at around release day – and maybe I’ll throw in a couple of extra goodies too.
If you bought FM on the Epic Games Store rather than Steam, you obviously won’t get access to the Steam Workshop. I don’t want to leave you out, so I will also make my files available for direct download, with instructions on how to install them.
So that’s what I have got in store for Football Manager 2021. If any of this has piqued your interest, be sure to hit the ‘Follow’ button below. And once again, you can find me on Twitter @Fuller_FM, where I’ll also be promoting plenty of other FM bloggers over the coming weeks.
Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you again very soon.
Fuller FM 
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