Author: Chris Fuller

Breaking FM: The Longest Season – Part 2

Published on by Chris Fuller

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Welcome back to Breaking FM, where my aim is to take Football Manager 2023 to the limits – and see how it can cope with extreme (and extremely unrealistic) situations.

For the first experiment of this series, I will find out what happens if a team in the English league system played the maximum number of games in a single season. This includes ALL league games, play-offs, cup ties (including replays), and even European and intercontinental fixtures!

The club I have chosen for this experiment is Dagenham & Redbridge. In Part 1, I explained how the experiment would work, which involved beefing up the Daggers squad, and giving them two seasons to qualify for every possible competition, so that their 2024/2025 season can become the longest one ever.

But Part 2 is where the fun really happens! In this post, I will go through the entire 2024/2025 season, in which the Daggers are aiming to play 99 games of football. We’ll see if FM23 can cope with scheduling so many matches, or if it will all fall to pieces… Continue reading “Breaking FM: The Longest Season – Part 2” →

Breaking FM: The Longest Season – Part 1

Published on by Chris Fuller

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Welcome to the first installment of a brand new mini-series here on Fuller FM.

In Breaking FM, I will be pushing Football Manager to its limits, seeing how well (or otherwise) the game handles extreme scenarios. I’m not sure if this will become a regular series on the blog, but if you enjoy reading this, then who knows?

For my first attempt at breaking FM, I will take over a team in the English leagues and manipulate their results, so that they play the maximum number of games in a season. Chelsea currently hold the record, playing 69 matches during the 2012/2013 season… but that’s not even close to the number I have in mind!

This first chapter explains how my experiment will work. I’ve worked out the maximum games a team can play, and how long it will take to get them into every available competition at the same time. Then it’s just a case of finding a club, assembling a team, and setting everything up for the longest season ever. Continue reading “Breaking FM: The Longest Season – Part 1” →

CM4 Revisited: Still Playing In 2023

Published on by Chris Fuller

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Championship Manager 4 – one of the most controversial games in Sports Interactive’s long-running franchise. To many fans, it was a groundbreaking release that introduced a 3D match engine to our favourite game. To others, it was a broken and buggy mess that was rushed out to the public before it was ready. Over the coming months, I will revisit the game in a series of posts.

In this article, I am celebrating the ‘survivors’ of Championship Manager 4. I have found 17 players in the CM4 database who are still playing football at a high level 20 years later, on Football Manager 2023. Some of these names will be familiar to you, but there are others that might not be so well-known… Continue reading “CM4 Revisited: Still Playing In 2023” →

Running old CM & FM games on Windows

Published on by Chris Fuller1 Comment

We’re all Football Manager lovers, aren’t we? But as much as we might enjoy the newer titles, I’m sure those of us who’ve been around for a while would love to go back in time – and re-play an older version of FM or Championship Manager.

Technology marches on – and those classic games that were designed for Windows 95, 98 or XP may not run perfectly on newer operating systems. Fortunately, it is still possible to play those older games on Windows 10 or 11, with a little bit of work.

In this guide, I will give you some tips on how to get your old Sports Interactive games running on modern versions of Windows. These instructions might also work for some other video games from the 1990s and 2000s, but I’ll be focussing on the CM and FM series. Continue reading “Running old CM & FM games on Windows” →

From The Archives: My Football Manager Forum Stories

Published on by Chris Fuller

I’ve been writing stories around my Championship Manager and Football Manager saves for a very long time. Since I was 13, in fact.

When the Fuller family went online in 2003, one of my first visits was to the Sports Interactive forums – and its Championship Manager Stories sub-forum (now known as Football Manager Stories, or FMS for short). As someone who has always enjoyed writing, I was so enthralled with some of the narratives other players were creating around their saves that I wanted to do the same.

So, I started writing about my Championship Manager 4 career with Millwall, in which I took the Lions from Division 1 to the Champions League in just two seasons. Looking back, the story was pretty badly-written – after all, I was only a teenager – and should never see the light of day.

Over the next few years, I gradually became more competent and confident in my writing. By the summer of 2014, I was finally ready to take the plunge – and publish my first story to FMS.

That story was “Welcome To Romford” – the first of several stories that I wrote about my long-running, 31-season career on Football Manager 2013. That was followed by more tales about my other FM saves… and some of these were so popular that they won several ‘FMS Awards’, as voted for by other members of the FMS community.

In October 2018, I launched this Fuller FM blog as the new home of my Football Manager stories. I subsequently stopped writing on FMS from 2019 until 2021, when I returned with a new long-term story celebrating the 20th anniversary of Championship Manager 01/02. That story is called “25 Years” and is currently ongoing.

Until now, these stories have only been accessible to anyone who has signed up to the official SI forums. And due to a problematic forum migration in 2016, some of my older FMS stories are either missing several chapters or have even disappeared completely.

Now, I have decided to make all my completed forum stories available to download as PDFs right here on Fuller FM.

Just a heads-up: these stories are generally quite long, quite wordy, and they read much more like epic novels than the shorter, screenshot-heavy blog stories you’re probably used to seeing here. Continue reading “From The Archives: My Football Manager Forum Stories” →

Player interactions in Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller

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Being successful in Football Manager isn’t just about signing the right players and building tactics that best suit their skills. You also need to show good people management to keep squad morale high, while also ensuring that your players are motivated and confident.

Player interactions are becoming increasingly important in FM. It’s vital know how to praise your players when they’re doing well, encourage them when they need picking up, and even discipline them when they deserve it.

Any top manager knows how to strike a good balance between punishment and reward. Being too harsh on your squad can create discontent and destroy team confidence, while constantly showering your players with praise can make them complacent and maybe even see you as a soft touch.

If you are struggling to handle player interactions, I’m here to help. Today, I have some tips for building up player relationships through interactions, including quick chats and promises. I also have a word of warning for those of you who like to reach for the water bottles after a defeat! Continue reading “Player interactions in Football Manager” →

FM13 In 2022: The Superstars That Weren’t

Published on by Chris Fuller

It’s time for another trip back in time here on Fuller FM! I will once again be revisiting my long-time Football Manager 2013 save to see how the footballing world looks in the year 2022.

Last time out, we looked at where some of today’s football superstars had ended up 10 seasons into my FM13 universe. Who’d have thought Son Heung-Min would be playing Championship football for Aston Villa?

For today’s article, I’ve found 15 players who developed into world-class talents on FM13, but who never reached those giddy heights in the real world. So where, how and why did it all go wrong for these Football Manager wonderkids? Continue reading “FM13 In 2022: The Superstars That Weren’t” →

Setting up Screen Flow in Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller

Back in the days of Championship Manager, the game used to automatically show you the latest results from major competitions such as the World Cup and the Champions League. Some of you probably miss that now, though you can still set that up manually on Football Manager 2023.

Hidden in the game settings is an underrated feature called ‘Screen Flow’. It can look daunting at first glance, but this guide will take you through every step of the process.

Screen Flow can also be a useful tool for finding exciting young prospects before other clubs snap them up. Tracking the statistics of various continental and international youth competitions can alert you to some potential starlets who you might then want to send your scouts to look at.

This guide was written specifically for FM23, but it also works on FM22, FM21 and FM20. If you are still playing FM19 or an earlier version of Football Manager, the instructions are slightly different, so please refer to this guide instead. Continue reading “Setting up Screen Flow in Football Manager” →

FM13 In 2022: The Best Players In The World?

Published on by Chris Fuller

And now it’s time for something a bit different on Fuller FM. Today, I’ll be revisiting probably my favourite FM game of all time – Football Manager 2013, which just so happens to be celebrating its 10th anniversary next week!

My longest and probably best ever save was on FM13. Starting at my hometown club Romford in the lower reaches of English football, I played on up until 2043, when I led Dagenham & Redbridge to domestic and European glory… but I’m not here to talk about that!

In this mini-series, I’ll be looking at the state of the FM13 game world at the end of the 2021/2022 season, and how things compare to the present day. For the opening installment, I will look at the nominees for this year’s Ballon d’Or, and see what happened to them in this virtual universe… Continue reading “FM13 In 2022: The Best Players In The World?” →

Retro Review: Ultimate Soccer Manager 98

Published on by Chris Fuller

It’s time for another Fuller FM ‘Retro Review’, where I replay a classic football management game from years gone by. I’m particularly excited about this, because it’s an absolute doozy!

Today, I will be looking back at a game that many people who grew up in the late 1990s still remember very fondly. This was regarded as a serious contender to Championship Manager, even daring to go places where Sports Interactive would not.

We’re going back to the year 1998 – a time when northern punk anarchists Chumbawamba were getting knocked down (and getting back up again), and when Dennis Bergkamp was doing Dennis Bergkamp things. This is Ultimate Soccer Manager 98. Continue reading “Retro Review: Ultimate Soccer Manager 98” →