Author: Chris Fuller

Hale End Heroes: Season 1, Part 2

Published on by Chris Fuller

Embed from Getty Images

The weather may be hotter than Granit Xhaka’s temper, but there’s always a good time for Football Manager! So sit back, grab a cool beverage, and enjoy this second chapter of my new FM22 series with Arsenal!

My main goal in this series is to lead Arsenal to Premier League or Champions League glory – with a core of academy players in the team. Everything is explained in Part 1, in case you missed that.

Basically, I will be sticking to some rules that will make this save more challenging – and put greater emphasis on youth development. The main rule is that I must always have at least one academy player in the starting line-up (this limit will increase by one before each new season). I can also only sign players who are aged under 19, have British/Irish nationality, or were ‘homegrown’ at Arsenal.

Today’s installment will take us through the first half of the 2021/2022 season. Will this new era at the Emirates get off to a strong start, or will AFTV be calling for my head? Let’s find out… Continue reading “Hale End Heroes: Season 1, Part 2” →

Hale End Heroes: Season 1, Part 1

Published on by Chris Fuller

Embed from Getty Images

Welcome to Arsenal… and to the start of a brand-new Football Manager 2022 series right here on Fuller FM!

Yes, for this save, I will be pushing Mikel Arteta out of his Emirates hotseat and taking charge of my beloved Gunners… but there’s a twist.

The end goal is to win either the Premier League or the Champions League – with a team consisting mostly of Arsenal academy graduates. Can I complete the challenge before FM23 is released, or will I fail as miserably as Unai Emery?

This first chapter will explain all… Continue reading “Hale End Heroes: Season 1, Part 1” →

Football Manager: What’s in a name?

Published on by Chris Fuller
This was an actual advert for Championship Manager 96/97 – and all those names belonged to actual Premier League players!

Now for something completely different here on Fuller FM!

Football has had its fair share of amusing monikers over the years – from the 19th-century England forward Harry Daft to the aptly-named Celtic flop Rafael Scheidt, via the iconic Paraguayan right-back Chiqui Arce. And as that very real Championship Manager advert from 1996 shows, the Premier League used to be full of innuendo!

There are over 600,000 people in the Football Manager database, so there are bound to be plenty of weird, wacky and wonderful names. Many of these can even be passed onto newly-generated players, so the possibilities for amusing names are truly endless.

Today, I’ll be looking at some of the more unusual names you can find on FM22. I’ll tell the tales of the players behind the names, and even explain some of their origins. Any name that sounds very suggestive in English probably means something perfectly innocent in its native language… Continue reading “Football Manager: What’s in a name?” →

FM22: The Age-Old Problem

Published on by Chris Fuller

ypfm22-kimmich
A 35-year-old Joshua Kimmich on FM21… and the same player on FM22.

In Football Manager 2021 – and in most previous FMs – many people complained about older players’ attributes declining too quickly. Once a player turned 32, their physical attributes would fall so fast that they’d be almost worthless by their 35th birthday.

This isn’t always the case in real-life, as better nutrition and advances in sports science are allowing elite footballers to keep playing into their late-30s and beyond. Cristiano Ronaldo is scoring Premier League hat-tricks at 37. Zlatan Ibrahimović was capped by Sweden at 40. Gianluigi Buffon was shutting out Lionel Messi in the Champions League at 42.

FM22 reflects this a lot better. Players now decline more slowly, especially those with high Natural Fitness and Professionalism. Anyone lacking in those departments will still struggle to continue past their mid-30s, but it’s now quite common for super-athletes like Romelu Lukaku and Thomas Müller to play top-flight football until they’re pushing 40.

At the other end of the scale, on FM21, young players could develop so quickly that they could easily peak at 21 or 22. This has been significantly slowed down on FM22, and so a top prospect generally won’t realise their full potential until they’re around 25 to 29. Much more realistic, right?

However, some FMers believe that these changes have gone too far the other way. There’ve been reports that too many top players stay at the top for too long – and that young talents struggle to even break into an elite club or national team, let alone become a regular starter.

Are the changes to player development working as intended, or are these concerns justified? Is it too hard for youngsters to break through on FM22? Let’s investigate… Continue reading “FM22: The Age-Old Problem” →

Retro Review: FIFA Manager 07

Published on by Chris Fuller

Hey everyone, Fuller FM here – the blogosphere’s most average virtual Football Manager, and it’s time for my retro review of FIFA Manager 07.

Some of you might remember my ‘EA MAY’ mini-series from last spring, when I reviewed three separate games from Electronic Arts’ now-defunct FIFA Manager series. Though we haven’t yet made it that far into 2022, I thought I’d revisit this series a month early. Call this ‘EApril’, if you… er, may.

Sadly, my quest to play FIFA Manager 14 – the final game in the franchise – goes on. After searching high and wide, I still haven’t been able to find a legal copy of the game that won’t cost me a kidney.

Instead, like that time when Lukas Graham’s black cat accidentally smashed a time-machine mirror under a ladder, I have gone back seven years. Here is my retrospective review of FIFA Manager 07. Continue reading “Retro Review: FIFA Manager 07” →

Review: Soccer Manager 2022

Published on by Chris Fuller

It’s that time of year again. For the fourth season in a row, I’ve had a look at the latest edition of the free-to-play Soccer Manager series.

Some of you might remember my previous Soccer Manager reviews. I wasn’t too hot on either SM19 or SM20, but I gave a more positive review of SM21, saying that I felt “the developers [were] finally steering this game in the right direction”.

Soccer Manager 2022 was released last November and can be downloaded from Steam right now (for mobile gamers, it’s also on Google Play and the App Store). But does it live up to its potential, or is it facing an early bath? Let’s take a closer look… Continue reading “Review: Soccer Manager 2022” →

Improving international management on Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller

Embed from Getty Images

Let’s talk about international management in Football Manager.

Club football might be the bread and butter of our sport, but there is nothing quite like the international game. Representing your country is always a high point in a player’s career, and winning the World Cup can lift an elite player to legendary status – like Pelé, Diego Maradona, or Bernard Diomède. For a manager, becoming a World or continental champion can make them a national hero.

Why, then, does international management feel so dull in FM? Managing a national team in the game is so bare-bones and tedious that it’s difficult to stay interested in it for long – and even winning a World Cup feels much more hollow than it should.

Just before the release of FM22, Guido from Strikerless went on “a bit of a rant” about FM’s take on international football, and what he would do to improve it. As we head into another international break, I feel it’s now time to share my thoughts and ideas – using some of Guido’s suggestions, and some others from the wider FM community. Continue reading “Improving international management on Football Manager” →

Retro Review: FourFourTwo Touchline Passion

Published on by Chris Fuller

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
“Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and – which is more – you’ll be a man, my son!
“Ladies and gentlemen, Fuller FM will be playing 4-4-f***ing-2.”

Welcome to another Retro Review here on Fuller FM. Today, I’ve decided to return to a rather obscure football management game from my childhood, and see if it still holds up two decades on.

The year is 2002. Arsenal have just won the Double, Real Madrid are the European champions, and teen wonder Wayne Rooney is about to make his Everton debut. Meanwhile, a new challenger to Championship Manager’s throne has emerged – with strong backing from a best-selling magazine, the game’s flashiest diamond geezer, and the glamorous new face of ITV!

Go grab yourselves some of Mr Kipling’s exceedingly good cakes, because we’re about to take a deep dive into Mike Bassett’s favourite video game. This is FourFourTwo Touchline Passion. Continue reading “Retro Review: FourFourTwo Touchline Passion” →

Retro databases in Football Manager: Awesome, but impractical?

Published on by Chris Fuller

Let’s talk about retro databases in Football Manager.

When we discuss which features we most want to see added to FM in the future, one of THE most popular requests is for Sports Interactive to add official historic databases.

The ability to manage a football team at any point in history – or even just during a specific time period – is something that appeals to many FMers. I’m sure some of you would like to go back to the 1970s or 1980s, or perhaps to the start of the Premier League era in 1992. Even the 2000s hold plenty of nostalgia for those of us who grew up at the turn of the millennium.

Unfortunately, despite numerous requests over the years (and indeed decades), it seems that SI won’t allow us to manage in the distant past for the foreseeable future. There are just too many legal and technical issues that stop this feature from being a viable addition.

In this post, I will try to explain why adding historic databases to FM is an awesome idea… but also an impractical one. Continue reading “Retro databases in Football Manager: Awesome, but impractical?” →

FM Mythbusting: Are English Teams Overrated?

Published on by Chris Fuller

Embed from Getty Images

It’s time to resolve a debate that has been raging across the Football Manager for years. Are English teams – and English players, for that matter – too overpowered?

Some people argue that Premier League players are rated too highly compared to their counterparts in La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga. They often see PL clubs winning more Champions Leagues than anyone else, England competing for major international trophies… and Callum Wilson becoming the best non-Norwegian striker in world football.

Sports Interactive are based in London, and a large portion of their research team is English. So is there any substance behind these claims that they overrate English teams and players? Are there some valid explanations for their success in FM? Or this simply a myth that has been blown out of proportion?

I’ll be using Football Manager 2021 to try and answer these questions. This article’s gonna be quite a long one… but if you love data and charts, you’re in for a treat. Continue reading “FM Mythbusting: Are English Teams Overrated?” →