Chris Fuller

25 Years: A Championship Manager 01/02 Story

Published on 12 October 202624 September 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

Championship Manager: Season 01/02 was released 25 years ago today.

The final game of the classic CM3 era, this was also the last version before Sports Interactive made the big leap towards adding a 2D match engine. For many people, it offers the perfect balance between playability and depth – not too shallow, not too much pointless fluff.

CM01/02 remains hugely popular to this day – getting regular data updates, and even new patches that add more leagues and new tournament formats.

Oddly enough, I never really got into CM01/02 – instead preferring to stick with its predecessors Championship Manager: Season 00/01 and Championship Manager: Season 99/00. Then, in the summer of 2021, I decided to write a new Championship Manager story, titled “25 Years”.

Starting at Dagenham & Redbridge in the Conference, I would chronicle my virtual manager’s journey over the course of 25 years – from July 2001 up until the end of the 2025/2026 season. As the story progressed, I would also include regular updates from the wider game world, as well as references to real-life events – from the September 11 attacks, right up to the rise and fall (and rise again) of a certain tangerine man-baby.

I ran the game on a fully-patched copy of CM01/02, but with some extra user-made patches to improve long-term playability. I used a heavily edited version of the Luessenhoff database, which expanded the database to over 100,000 players – including a 14-year-old Lionel Messi in Barcelona’s C team.

I began posting my story on the SI forums back in October 2021 and eventually completed it in July of this year. This adventure took in five clubs, over 1,200 competitive matches, and more tantrums and overpowered goalkeepers than any sane football manager could handle.

Now that the story is finished, I am ready to share it with you in its full glory. I have uploaded the story as six separate PDF files, all of which are completely free to download. The main story is split into five ‘parts’ consisting of five seasons apiece, and the final part is an epilogue, which also includes various facts, statistics, and biographies of the main players.

To celebrate this story’s official induction into the Fuller FM archives, I have posted the prologue below. If you want to read more, you can find links to the full 1,874-page story underneath that.

Continue reading →

Review: Championship Soccer 2026

Published on 30 September 202624 September 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another Fuller FM review. Today, I’m going to look at a brand-new football game that was released earlier this month!

No, it’s not We Are Football 2027. It’s also not that non-league manager game that totally doesn’t look like it was vibe-coded with Claude. I will probably get to those titles another time.

A couple of years ago, I looked back on a versatile and addictive shareware game from the mid-2000s that had sadly faded into obscurity. Now, though, it has risen from the dead and been given a new lease of life.

So let me (re)introduce you to Championship Soccer… 2026!

Continue reading →

Blog Update #10

Published on 15 September 202617 September 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

It’s that time of the year. Another Football Manager release cycle is coming to an end… and soon we’ll all be experiencing the hope, excitement, and inevitable misery all over again.

As one of the many people who found Football Manager 26 to be a bitter disappointment, I really can’t wait to move on. And this is what this annual Fuller FM blog update is all about.

In today’s post, I’ll be delivering my final withering summary of FM26, discussing all the non-FM26 posts I’ve published over the past year… and lastly, I’ll be outlining my hopes and plans for Football Manager 27.

Continue reading →

CM00/01 Revisited: A Decade At The Den – Part 3

Published on 11 September 202610 September 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

Embed from Getty Images

Hello again. This is the third and final chapter of my Championship Manager 00/01 mini-series. Starting in the year 2000, I’ve set out to lead Millwall from Division 2 to the top of world football.

Having first made it into the Premiership, and then won every major domestic trophy, it’s now time for the endgame. I have just three seasons left in which I want to win the Champions League… and a world championship.

Continue reading →

CM00/01 Revisited: A Decade At The Den – Part 2

Published on 7 September 20266 September 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

Embed from Getty Images

Welcome back to this retro Championship Manager mini-series. For the past seven months or so, I have been managing Millwall on Championship Manager 00/01, with the challenge of leading them to English, European and world domination within just 10 seasons.

This is the second part of the trilogy. After celebrating two promotions in three seasons, can the Lions now establish themselves in the Premiership? And how long will it take for them to add some major silverware to the trophy cabinet?

Continue reading →

CM00/01 Revisited: A Decade At The Den – Part 1

Published on 3 September 20262 September 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

Embed from Getty Images

On 8 February 2001, when I was 10 years old, I bought my copy of Championship Manager: Season 00/01 from my local Woolworths in Romford. These days, it’s now a post office that doubles up as a pound shop, but I digress.

I’d already been playing Champ Man for a couple of years, but it was CM00/01 which firmly cemented my addiction to the series. It was also on CM00/01 that I played my first of MANY save games as Millwall manager. As a tactical novice with a habit for recklessly chopping and changing my squad, I somehow fluked a promotion through the Division 2 play-offs in my first season – but once we made it to Division 1, it all came crashing down.

Now two-and-a-half decades older, and a little bit wiser, I decided it was time to shine some new light through old windows. I was ready to go back to The Den once again.

On 8 February 2026, I booted up CM00/01 and began a brand new career with Millwall. My challenge was simple, but not easy. With 25 years’ worth of Championship Manager knowledge and experience under my belt, could I lead this third-tier club all the way to the top of English, European AND world football… in just TEN in-game seasons?

This is the first part of a trilogy, in which I will tell the story of my decade at The Den.

Continue reading →

Review: NUTMEG!

Published on 15 July 202614 July 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

Embed from Getty Images

With World Cup fever dying down, thoughts are now turning towards the start of a new league season. Soon, we’ll be watching 22 human advertising boards attack each other with set-pieces to generate more money for their American private-equity bosses, while ludicrously long and picky VAR checks create fresh content for tribalistic and terminally angry influencers.

There was a time when football was much simpler and less serious – merely the most important of the least important things. It’d be wrong to call the 1980s a more “innocent” time, given all the racism, hooliganism, and Thatcher-led demonisation of football culture that was going on during that decade. Yet it’s easy to understand why many people are still nostalgic for the days of Mitre balls, “Roy of the Rovers” comics, and truly heinous mullets.

My name is Chris, but today, you can call me Johnny Hates Jazz. I’m about to turn back the clock and check out a (fairly) new game on Steam which combines modern strategic card games with old-school football management.

So here it is… my review of NUTMEG! A Nostalgic Deckbuilding Football Manager. (Don’t worry, folks. I’ll just call it NUTMEG! from this point on.)

Continue reading →

Fairer World Cup: THE FINAL

Published on 5 June 202616 July 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

“Open wide for some soccer!
“The Fairer World Cup Final is coming to Fuller FM! It’s all here – fast-kickin’, low-scorin’, and ties? You bet!
“You’ll see all your favourite soccer stars – like Bellingham, Bellingham II, Sanabria, and Enciso – and they’ll all be signin’ autographs!
“This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on Earth – Ireland or Paraguay?”

[Clears throat] Anyway… welcome to the final chapter of the Fairer World Cup.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve used Football Manager 2024 to find out what would happen at a World Cup where players represented the weakest national teams they were available for. You can revisit all the previous chapters right here.

After four fierce Quarter Finals and two thrilling Semi Finals, we now have our Finalists. Today, we will crown the new kings of international football…

Continue reading →

International Management: The Last Word on FM26

Published on 3 June 20265 July 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

About six months have passed since I last touched Football Manager 26.

When the first game of the new FM era launched, it was a bug-ridden disaster that looked like the debut project of a single coder in their bedroom, rather than the latest chapter of a Triple-A studio’s 34-year dynasty. Unsurprisingly, I’ve been focussing on other games during this cycle.

But now, for the first time in ages, there’s a sign of hope for FM26. A big new update came out last week – bringing with it international management, and a bespoke [wink] World Cup game mode. So I reinstalled the demo to see if this game deserves another chance at glory… or if it should be left in the departure lounge like Phil Foden.

Continue reading →

Fairer World Cup: Quarter Finals & Semi Finals

Published on 1 June 202616 July 2026 by Chris FullerLeave a comment

We’re now at the business end of the Fairer World Cup, with just eight teams remaining in the hunt to lift the trophy in Atlanta on 19 July.

Last time out, it was the Last 16. We said a fond farewell to plucky underdogs Thailand… and a rather less fonder farewell to England, who were never any better than mediocre at this tournament. At least some things never change.

But what about the eight teams who have survived? In today’s chapter, we will whittle them down to just two, with the Quarter Finals to be followed immediately by the Semi Finals. Can Argentina move a step closer towards retaining their title, or will a new champion be crowned?

Continue reading →