Ladies and gentlemen… this is blog update number 5.
Yes, it’s time for my annual post where I update you on what I’ve been up to over the past 12 months. With my long-term Football Manager 2021 save now completed, I’m ready to give my final thoughts on what has perhaps been the most divisive game in the series’ history.
And at the end of a “make or break” year for Fuller FM, I’ll also discuss my long-term plans for this blog. Have we managed to outdo José Mourinho by surviving beyond the third season?
THE GAME
Firstly, these are my thoughts on Football Manager 2021, which for me has been an engrossing but often frustrating experience. I gave an in-depth review of FM21 back in January, but I’ll just recap the main points here:
While Sports Interactive did not explicitly include COVID in FM21, match schedules and transfers in the first few seasons were adapted to reflect the difficulties of pandemic football. On the main, I believe they’ve done a pretty fine job of balancing realism with escapism.
The match engine was perhaps the smoothest and most sophisticated it has ever been on Football Manager. Those of us who were particularly frustrated with FM20 were pleased to see that one-on-ones and decision-making had been improved, and that there was a greater variety of goals. (I’ll never get enough of those cheeky deft chips over the keeper!)
Granted, it wasn’t perfect (not that it ever will be). Player animations still left plenty to be desired, and the AI could often play too defensively for too long, especially against dominant user teams. The ‘overpowered’ 4-2-3-1 gegenpress became a meme tactic, though I still enjoyed a fair amount of success with different formations and tactical styles.
I loved the new-look trophy presentations and the redesigned ‘Quick Chats’. The game itself was much better optimised and much less prone to crashes. Expected goals and efficiency charts were welcome additions to FM, giving players the tools to assess the quality of the chances their teams were having (both for and against) and adapt their tactics accordingly.
Unfortunately, for those FMers who like to deeply analyse their team, FM21 was a huge letdown. Certain statistics didn’t record properly at various stages of the game’s life cycle, and the match ratings system was inconsistent at best (I remember when a keeper could get a 6.2 rating after keeping an easy clean sheet). Don’t even get me started on the outright broken match analysis tools!
The match interface underwent a controversial overhaul, not least by taking away the timebar that had been present in every version of the game since the 2D engine was introduced in Championship Manager 4. After many complaints, SI brought it back… but only for past matches. Even then, getting to a specific match highlight can still be a laborious process.
Those last few points in particular underline most of the frustrations I’ve had as an FM blogger, and as someone who has written stories based on Football Manager saves since 2014. With analysis tools being almost useless and the interface becoming needlessly clunky, FM21 has been THE worst version of Football Manager to write about.
But write about it I did…
THE SERIEseseses
My first save – “Rule Bretagne” – began as soon as the FM21 beta launched last November. I took charge of Rennes, who’d just achieved their best ever finish in Ligue 1, and had an exceptional youth setup.
After three steady seasons in which we consistently finished 2nd behind PSG, the 2023/2024 campaign would be one of the greatest in my Football Manager life. Rennes completed a clean sweep of French trophies: the Trophée des Champions, the Coupe de France, and our first ever Ligue 1 title, in which we finished the season UNDEFEATED.
It was also a historic campaign in the Champions League, as we beat the odds to reach the Final against the mighty Real Madrid. Unfortunately, we ran out of steam and couldn’t make it the perfect ending to this save, bravely going down 2-0.
This wasn’t strictly a blog save. Instead, I posted regular updates on Twitter @Fuller_FM, and then wrote a mini-series of three posts here to sum everything up. I gave a season-by-season summary in Part 1 and Part 2, and then looked at each of the players who made up our ‘Unbeatables’ team of 2023/2024.
I kicked off my main FM21 series in March. In “Journey of a Deadman”, I took the guise of Shama Deadman – a rookie coach from Guernsey who travelled across Europe to build a managerial career that took him from part-time Welsh football to the Champions League.
I had great plans and ambitions for this series, which eventually ran for 11 seasons and 46 chapters, making it my longest yet on this blog. But like a youth player with 1 Determination and a Slack personality, this story probably didn’t fulfil its true potential.
You would have noticed that I rarely went into much detail in my writing, instead progressing through seasons at a much quicker pace. I would have loved to have covered certain aspects of my team(s) in greater depth… but frankly, the game made that very difficult, if not impossible.
Long-term readers might have also noticed that I was starting to lose enthusiasm towards the end. Over time, I started to notice more and more bugs that were taking a lot of immersion out of my game experience.
I was never allowed to set a ‘Code of Conduct’ at Győr, while I never got a trophy celebration after either of my two Super League victories with Basel. Also, non-playable countries stopped generating players after the first season – just the latest of MANY issues that affected youth intakes throughout the FM21 cycle.
Bugs aside, playing the game was becoming a more stressful experience all round. I’m not one of those Reddidiots who would throw my computer out of the window because the opposition scored a 95th-minute winner… but yes, I do get angry now and then. Once I started taking my anger out on much tougher objects than tissue boxes, I realised it was time to step back.
That’s partly why I decided to end my journeyman series earlier than I would’ve liked…
THE FUTURE
…oh, and there’s also the little-known fact that Football Manager 2022 is coming out very soon. Tuesday 9 November, to be precise, though anyone who has pre-ordered the game will be able to play the beta about two weeks before.
Honestly, I’m not yet sure I’ll even play FM22, let alone pre-order it. As great as FM21’s match engine was, a lot of the wider game was very buggy, and there is soooo much I want to see improved on FM22 (especially when it comes to making longer-term saves more immersive).
Some of the headline features that have been announced do intrigue me, not least the data hub (if it actually works) and the reworked player animations. As someone who prefers to get their transfer business done early, I’m less excited about a new-look ‘deadline day’, while the staff meetings just seem to be needlessly bloating a feature that was pretty well streamlined.
Also, have you seen those newgen faces?! Some of those have more prominent eyebrows than Bert from “Sesame Street”… and poor old Dean Flynn looks like the secret lovechild of Judy Finnigan and Ewan McGregor!
And so we come to the future of this blog. Fuller FM will continue, but posts will be much less frequent – especially if I decide to give FM22 a miss. Moving forward, I want to focus more on quality than quantity.
I would like to write more Football Manager Guides (like these ones about using shouts and preparing for pre-season), while FM Mythbusting could return to debunk certain myths about the game. I’ll also continue reviewing any football management game I can get my hands on, whether they’re retro or more modern.
Also, there will probably be no more ‘Let’s Play’ stories… at least not from me. The journeyman series didn’t get as many views as I was hoping for, and it also took a lot of creative energy out of me.
But if you’re an FM writer who wants to publish your own stories without the hassle of starting your own blog, I’d be quite happy to host them for you right here on Fuller FM. If this is something that interests you, feel free to tweet me @Fuller_FM or use the contact form.
And finally… here’s something for the retro gamers out there.
While I am taking a break from writing FM stories, I have started writing a new story based around a long-term journeyman save on Championship Manager 01/02. It’s called “25 Years”, and you can read it on the Sports Interactive forums (you will need to register if you haven’t already).
That story is in a very different style to a typical CM/FM blog series (for one thing, it’s all text, no screenshots) so I don’t yet have any plans to repost it here. If you would like to read that here, though, please let me know.
That’s all for now. Thanks to all of you who’ve stopped by to read my Football Manager posts over the past year – and indeed over the past three years.
I’ll now head off for a while to recharge by batteries, but rest assured: I’ll be back soon.
Fuller FM 
Hi Chris,
Sorry I haven’t commented or liked your posts yet but I promise you I’ve been a massive fan of your writing. I can safely say you are my favourite FM blogger I’ve found so far (even if you are an Arsenal fan).
Can’t say it doesn’t sadden me to hear you’re packing in the “Let’s Play” stuff though, I loved how the series progressed and how you documented it. I find many bloggers go into absurd amounts of detail when covering but you manage to get the balance right, for me anyway.
In an ideal world you’d be planning your next journeyman save now. I would love to see you write one but I understand your reasons for losing that creative spark. In a way I feel responsible: perhaps if I had liked and commented earlier on in your run you’d have found a little more steam to continue.
Still, you’ve brought a lot of enjoyment to my life recently and I can’t thank you enough for that. Good luck in the rest of your endeavours, I’ll be waiting for your next post.
Thanks very much. I’m pleased that my story has brought you some enjoyment recently.
Don’t feel like you have to apologise for not commenting sooner. There are loads of FM bloggers, YTers, streamers that I read or watch quietly, without letting them know that I appreciate their work. I’ve always been very shy.
I do enjoy writing let’s plays. I’m not very good at explaining tactics, so I focus more on the story-telling and the comedy – to stand out a bit more. But I’ve been doing that for 7 years now (first on the forums, and then here) and feel it’s time to slow down.
I did think about ending the journeyman series much earlier because view numbers were pretty low (compared to my previous stories), but I carried on because I was still enjoying the save, and I didn’t want to let down my readers.
When more bugs kept creeping up and the Basel job became more stressful, the enjoyment wasn’t there anymore. That’s why I decided to end it.
My next FM save (whether it’s on FM22) won’t be another journeyman. Those 4 years I had at Gyor really reminded me of how much I love building a club up. I honestly prefer one-club saves, rather than switching teams every few years.