Football Manager 27 is officially released next week… but, of course, many of us have already been getting to grips with the new game.
Last month, Sports Interactive made the FM27 Beta [nope] Early Access [try again] Advanced Access [sigh] Launch Preview free to play for a limited time – even if you didn’t pre-order the game first. So, from 29 October to 3 November, you had the opportunity to try before you buy.
As someone who fell off FM26 very quickly, I was excited to give FM27 a shot. There was just one problem: me.
You see, I’m quite a slow FMer. It usually takes me three weeks to complete a full season, so at my usual pace, I would probably only get to October by the end of the free trial. If I was going to make the most of Launch Preview, this sloth would need to get a jet pack.
So I set myself a challenge. Could I complete a full Bundesliga season in just five days (and change) – without losing my mind or signing Kévin Rodrigues? [To be fair, signing Kévin Rodrigues would probably be a sign that you’ve lost your mind anyway. -Ed]
DAY 1 (THURSDAY 29 OCTOBER)
It’s 6:30pm. The new Football Manager has now been installed, and I’m finally ready to start my FM25 save with VfB Stuttgart… about two years behind schedule, but whatever.
If I want to get through a full season before freeplay ends, I’ll need to delegate some tasks to FM’s ever-so-smart AI. In this save, I will be the head coach – focussing on tactics, training, and talking to my players.
The technical director will sort out our staff, while the director of football deals with all contracts and transfers… though I’ll still have the final say, just in case he tries to do something stupid. But I always disable the first transfer window anyway, so I don’t need to worry about Christian Gentner’s aptitude until January.
I spend the first two hours or so meeting my squad and playing through pre-season. Stuttgart’s fertile young goalkeeper Dennis Seimen is out injured, but we still have a pretty solid defence, including left-back Maximilian Mittelstädt, central defensive beefcake Jeff Chabot… and right-back Leonidas Stergiou, who was in my ‘unbeatable’ Rennes squad on FM21.
Further forward, captain Deniz Undav (ex of Brighton) is part of a productive strike partnership, serving as the second striker behind the big, deep-lying forward Ermedin Demirovic. I also discover pretty quickly that I really enjoy watching Angelo Stiller as a marauding midfield playmaker.
I set up a 4-2-3-1 ‘vertical tiki-taka’ tactic, with the option to switch to a 4-3-3 for tougher matches. After an unbeaten pre-season, we take on second-tier Duisburg in the DFB-Pokal. It’s a surprisingly scrappy match that ends in a narrow 3-2 win, though Demirovic is massively helped by some… let’s say “casual” defending by the hosts.
Nonetheless, the victory leaves us in good shape for our Bundesliga opener. It’s nothing to worry about, really – just a short trip south to Munich, to take on Harry Kane and his mates.
Er… yeah. Bayern are good. But they beat Stuttgart 5-1 in real-life, so to ‘only’ lose this 4-1 is something positive… right?
We then lick our wounds and beat Köln 3-2 in our first home game of the season. Demirovic nets a hat-trick, before some sheepish defending allow the Billy Goats a couple of late consolations. Unfortunately, things don’t get any better at Stamford Bridge, where we are lucky to scrape a draw against Shakhtar Donetsk in our Champions League opener.
And on that note, it’s time to go to bed. Maybe I can dream up a new plan to make our defenders… you know… actually defend?
DAY 2 (FRIDAY 30 OCTOBER)
Right, so we’ve been playing some great stuff on the ball, but I don’t think our high press is doing us any favours when it comes to through-balls. Toning it down to a mid block should hopefully make us less vulnerable. I’ve also moved Undav from a centre-forward to an attacking midfielder out of possession, so that he will track back a bit more.
Let’s see how these changes work out against Dortmund…
I dunno, man. Maybe defending on FM27 is just broken.
After beating Hoffenheim and losing to Dortmund, Stuttgart enter the first international break in 10th place. Meanwhile, our DoF has given Stiller and Chabot new contracts – no pay rises, but they now have release clauses. Let’s hope they don’t come back to bite us…
We return from our break with a 2-0 win over promoted Paderborn. In completely unrelated news, Seimen is the ‘player of the match’ in his first game after injury, and he then keeps a couple more clean sheets against Hamburg and Gladbach. Maybe it was just a case of our other goalies being impotent after all.
Naturally, we then fluff our lines at Leverkusen – once again forgetting how to defend, keep our cool, stay onside, or even play something resembling football. A true Halloween horror show… on the night before Halloween, no less.
That leaves us in 7th place after eight Bundesliga matches. The board want us to finish in the top five, so we have to sharpen up soon, otherwise my job could be on the line.
Meanwhile in the Champions League, we need a late goal from Undav to avoid a home defeat against my old friends Real Betis. We then follow that up with right-winger Jamie Leweling giving us a famous win at Manchester United, massively boosting our hopes of reaching the knockouts.
DAY 3 (SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER)
Now this is a good start to the weekend. Leweling made it a Manchester double with this early opener against Citeh. Left-winger Chris Führich then doubles our lead at the start of the second half, before THE CHEATS fight back to snatch a late draw.
Our addiction to Champions League draws continues with a couple of goalless dirges against Internazionale and Como – making it five stalemates out of six. If we are going to scrape into the knockouts, we will surely have to win one of our remaining matches against either Lyon or Celtic.
But I’m pleased to say that after tinkering with my tactics for the first few months of the season, I’ve now settled on a system I’m happy with. My plan for today is to get to the end of 2026, by which point I hope we’re back into the top four and qualified for the Champions League knockout rounds.
But that probably won’t happen if we concede two goals from two shots at home to a Werder Bremen team sitting second-from-bottom. Only the latest of late Lewelling levellers spared Die Roten from ‘Die Wasserflasche’. [Er… turns out you still can’t throw water bottles on FM27.]
We quickly return to winning ways at Schalke – now back in the Bundesliga under the management of Miron Muslic (remember him, Plymouth fans?). After a dip in form, Demirovic gets back on the scoresheet with a goal that looks suspiciously offside to me.
Then I was gently reminded that you can’t be offside if you are behind the ball. So I’ll let FM VAR off the hook… for now.
After that, it’s a real mixed bag of results. 0-0 home draw against Eintracht Frankfurt, a tame 1-0 win at Bundesliga new boys Elversberg, and then two more dropped points at home to Union Berlin. Demirovic thought he’d won it late on, but this time, he was actually offside.
This is really worrying, I won’t lie. After netting six goals in our first six matches, Demirovic has only found the net four times since October – and Undav hasn’t had a single goal contribution for nearly two months. Our two best central attackers have gone off the boil just when we need them most.
Let’s hope we can get them firing again at Freiburg…
[Sigh] Freiburg spank us 4-0. Undav and Demirovic both get match ratings of 6.2… and Seimen produces a 5.7 stinker in goal. I’m pretty sure you have to kick the referee’s cat to get a match rating that low on Football Manager.
All that means our nine-game unbeaten run is in ashes, my night is ruined, and I’ll have to go back to the tactics board tomorrow.
We do at least make progress in the DFB-Pokal when our second string sees off Köln – setting up a mouth-watering Quarter Final at home to RB Leipzig. Hmm… maybe we should sign Christoph Baumgartner?
DAY 4 (SUNDAY 1 NOVEMBER)
Unfortunately, we didn’t sign Baumgartner (he agreed to join Sunderland on loan instead). But after starting the new year with another frustrating 0-0 draw against Augsburg, I feel like selling Undav and signing an entirely new frontline.
Look… I’m really trying to complete the season before the free trial is over, but results like this make it soooo hard to stay motivated. Augsburg had 10 men for over 70 minutes and we STILL couldn’t create any decent openings! It’s as if someone’s turned off the tap and we’ve gone completely dry!
I am now so desperate to fix our attacking blues that I resort to asking [shudder] Discord for some tactical advice. Sadly, this comes too late to stop us losing to Leipzig. Baumgartner gets his energy-fuelled wings and heads home the winner, after which he decides that he doesn’t fancy moving to Sunderland after all. Who can blame him?
Now we are down in 10th place – four points off the Champions League spots. I am called into the dreaded board meeting, where I basically have to promise the chairman that we will win our next match at home to fellow mid-tablers Mainz.
Okay, so here’s the tactic I’m going with. I was advised to get more out of our most creative players – Fuhrich on the left wing, and Lorenz Assignon at right wing-back. So I basically inverted the tactic and changed a few roles to give them more space.
And so I ended up with something more like the tactic we started the season with, back when we were scoring goals but our defence was practically useless. Oh how I long for those care-free halcyon days of Friday afternoon.
Sadly, those days are gone. We’re just a Russell Martin tribute act – loads of possession, plenty of shots, but almost nothing to show for it.
And that draw was the final straw for club chairman Alexander Wehrle.
Exactly midway through my first season in the Bundesliga, and I have been sacked. That’s the first time it’s ever happened to me on Fuller FM – at least in a save where I wasn’t actively trying to lose my job.
What a farce that was. I tried to fix our defence, and all I did was break our offence. Turns out this new “tactical effectiveness” system is quite important after all.
But don’t worry. I had a contingency plan, just in case this happened.
You’re probably thinking that I could simply add another manager to Stuttgart – someone who looks exactly like me, except he speaks with a German accent and wears a hat. Or that I could pull a “Dallas”, rewind to the start of November, and pretend that the last three months were all a dream.
But no. I’m going to swallow my pride and look for another job. I promised that I would see out a full season before the end of the free trial, and I’m determined to do that – even if it’s with another team.
See you again soon, folks.
