Author: Chris Fuller

Millwall Firewall: Part 3

Published on by Chris Fuller

Welcome back to my Football Manager 2024 series, where I’m about to finish my first season as Millwall manager.

In the previous chapter, we began the Championship campaign with some erratic results, requiring a mid-season change of tactics. Now we’re back in form – and hoping to make a charge into the play-off places.

Today, I’ll round up our January transfer activity before going through the second half of the 2023/2024 season. Can we hit the bullseye like Aidomo Emakhu in his goal celebrations… or will we miss our play-off target? And if we do miss out, will the board send me packing? Continue reading “Millwall Firewall: Part 3” →

ITCH, ETCH & ATCH: My FM24 team competition history add-ons

Published on by Chris Fuller

Football Manager 2024 is now out of early access and has been fully released. Enjoying it so far?

This short post is just letting you know about some FM24 editor files that I have created. They add extensive competition data to virtually every national team in the game, 1,000+ European clubs, 250+ South American clubs, and 200+ clubs from North and Central America and the Caribbean.

If you’re the kind of FMer who loves to have as much depth and history in the game as possible, then please read on, because these add-ons might just be for you. Continue reading “ITCH, ETCH & ATCH: My FM24 team competition history add-ons” →

Millwall Firewall: Part 2

Published on by Chris Fuller

Happy Football Manager 2024 release day, everybody!

To celebrate a magnificent Monday that even Garfield might enjoy, here’s the second chapter of my FM24 series, where my aim is to lead Millwall into the Premier League within three seasons. If you missed the series introduction, you can catch up with Part 1 right here.

Today’s chapter will recap the first half of the 2023/2024 Championship season. Can the Millwall firewall hold firm, or will I need to make some tactical tweaks to ignite a play-off challenge?

By the way, if you’re wondering how a 33-year-old nobody wound up managing a Championship club, please let Mr Berylson explain why he gave me the job…

Continue reading “Millwall Firewall: Part 2” →

Millwall Firewall: Part 1

Published on by Chris Fuller

“Welcome to the Lions’ Den, temptation’s on his way. Welcome to the house of fun!”

And you thought there was already enough madness on Fuller FM!

Football Manager 2024 has been in beta – no, sorry, ‘Early Access’ – for a week-and-a-half now. For my first save on FM24, I will be taking charge of Millwall in the EFL Championship, with the aim of leading this unfashionable South London club into the Premier League. No one will like me, but I won’t care!

In this opening chapter, I will have a first look at the Millwall mob I have inherited from Gary Rowett, and our targets for the 2023/2024 season. But first, let me tell you a story… Continue reading “Millwall Firewall: Part 1” →

Day 1 on a new Football Manager save

Published on by Chris Fuller

Embed from Getty Images

You’ve bought and installed Football Manager. You’ve downloaded all those graphics mods and name fixes that Sports Interactive definitely don’t want you to use. You’ve kissed your partner goodbye and fed the cat…

…and now you’ve started a brand new save and added yourself as manager of your chosen club. What’s next?

Starting a new FM save can be daunting, especially if you’re new to the series. It can feel like there are hundreds of things to do before you even get into your first match. But if you take the time to set everything up just how you want to, you can get your save off to a strong start – and possibly save time in the long run.

Using my Millwall save on Football Manager 2024, I will give you some tips on what to do on the first day of a brand-new career, before you click ‘Continue’ for the first time. Continue reading “Day 1 on a new Football Manager save” →

Blog Update #7

Published on by Chris Fuller

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So long, Football Manager 2023. I would say it’s been a blast, but… well… it hasn’t.

It’s time for the traditional Fuller FM autumn blog update. As I usually do at this time of year, I’m going to summarise my thoughts on FM23 and round up everything I’ve posted on this here blog over the past 12 months. I’ll also reveal my plans for Football Manager 2024 – the very last Football Manager of its kind. Continue reading “Blog Update #7” →

Championship Manager Magazine: The Cover CDs

Published on by Chris Fuller

Did you know that there used to be an official magazine dedicated to Championship Manager and Football Manager?

Two decades ago, Sports Interactive teamed up with Future Publishing to produce a series of magazines about the game we all know and love, selling it in various retailers across the UK. Future was (and still is) a British multimedia giant behind many successful publications, such as PC Zone and FourFourTwo.

The first issue of Championship Manager Magazine was released in October 2002 and included loads of screenshot and feature reveals about the newly-announced Championship Manager 4. Another four issues were published throughout 2003, featuring plenty of content for anyone who enjoyed CM4 and its sequel – Championship Manager 03/04.

Championship Manager as we knew it became Football Manager in 2004, when SI split up with Eidos and shacked up with SEGA. That year saw three issues of Football Manager Magazine hit the shelves, building up to the release of Football Manager 2005. Sadly, the magazine series was cancelled shortly afterwards.

I collected every issue and still have them all… but they are currently boxed up, in anticipation of a house move that has (for now) been put on hold. I’d like to learn how to scan these magazines and archive them for posterity one day, but that will have to wait.

Each magazine also came with a CD, which included various programs, utilities and tactics for CM fans to enjoy – and a few other goodies to boot. Unfortunately, it appears that nobody has archived them online… until now.

Earlier this month, I uploaded all eight of these CDs onto the Internet Archive. The archive boasts “the largest vintage and historical software library in the world”, which includes cover discs from various other computer magazines.

You can find links to all those files below. These can be downloaded as ISO images and then ‘mounted’ onto a virtual CD drive. If you’re running Windows 8.1 or later, you only need to double-click on an ISO file to mount it. If you’re running Windows 7 or earlier, you’ll need to use a third-party program such as WinCDEmu.

Continue reading “Championship Manager Magazine: The Cover CDs” →

Fake Players in Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller

I once had a Western Digital hard drive sitting on the shelf above my desk. This came from the old Fuller family computer – a 1999 Viglen, on which I would spend a lot of time playing Championship Manager during my youth. When the Viglen died in 2010, I kept the hard drive.

A few years later, I tried to recover the data from the drive myself, only to be met by a load of lovely clicking sounds (not a good sign). Defeated, I reluctantly put it back on the shelf, where it gathered dust for the best part of a decade.

Earlier this year, I finally sent the drive off to a professional data recovery service. After waiting several months for them to find the right replacement parts, I was delighted when they brought my data back to life with a complete recovery! My old CM saves live on!

Anyway, while going through my CM archive and reliving my teenage memories, I stumbled across one particular save file from Championship Manager 00/01. This was a save file where all the real-life players were replaced with fake versions of themselves – goodbye Alessandro Del Piero, hello Federico Longo.

And this took me down a rabbit hole, into Championship Manager (and Football Manager)’s fiction factory… Continue reading “Fake Players in Football Manager” →

Looking Ahead To Football Manager 2024 (And 2025)

Published on by Chris Fuller

It’s fair to say that, for some people, Football Manager 2023 has not lived up to expectations.

Despite record sales, FM23 received plenty of criticism over its lack of exciting new features, and Sports Interactive’s apparent reluctance to fix some long-standing bugs. Long-time players, including myself, have begun to wonder if the series is stagnating.

But good news is on the way! Last week, SI put out a lengthy blog post in which studio director Miles Jacobson discussed “The Future of Football Manager”. This development update gives us some exciting details about Football Manager 2024, which will be released later this year… and even gives us a taste of what we can expect in Football Manager 2025!

So, what do the next 18 months have in store for us FMers? Continue reading “Looking Ahead To Football Manager 2024 (And 2025)” →

My thoughts on Football Manager 2023

Published on by Chris Fuller2 Comments

I should probably have got round to this by now, shouldn’t I?

Hey there, folks. It has now been five months since Football Manager 2023 was released, and so much has happened during its life cycle. On a personal level, my dad had cancer surgery, my old computer slowly died on me, and I’ve been getting ready to move 150 miles across the country. It’s not been much fun.

And what about FM23 itself? Well… that’s not been much fun either.

During the beta, I started a short-term save with Real Betis (which I wrote about on Twitter), but playing the game was such a frustrating experience that I abandoned it a few weeks after the full release. I’ve dabbled in a few test saves since then, but I only got into playing the game ‘properly’ again after the Winter Update came out early last month.

So, at long last, here are my thoughts about the latest installment of Sports Interactive’s football management simulation. Is this a genuine upgrade on FM22, or is it a season update too far? Continue reading “My thoughts on Football Manager 2023” →