My Arsenal adventure on Football Manager 2022 continues – and this chapter could be a very important one, as we attempt to lift our first trophy since I became manager.
The Gunners are heading into 2023 sitting just inside the top four of the Premier League, but we also have some defensive issues that need addressing. You can catch up on the season so far by revisiting Part 2.
As far as this chapter is concerned, we’ll kick things off with the January transfer window, where we say farewell to one of our longest-serving players. We also take on RB Leipzig in the Champions League knockout rounds, welcome a new youth intake… and attempt to win the EFL Cup for the first time since 1993.
My second season as Arsenal manager is now underway – and after leading the Gunners to 4th place in the Premier League last time out, the pressure is firmly on me to consolidate our place among England’s elite.
In the previous chapter, I looked ahead to the 2022/2023 campaign by unveiling a couple of major signings – including the return of Hale End graduate Yunus Musah. We now have FIVE youth products in the first-team squad, as my plan to rebuild the team around our academy starts to take shape.
Today’s chapter will take us through the first three months of the new season, from August to November. This includes our first Champions League matches since 2017, as we look to qualify from a surprisingly tricky group that includes Roma and Bayer Leverkusen.
Oh yes, and there’s also the small matter of a winter World Cup in Qatar…
It’s time to kick off the second season of my Arsenal series on Football Manager 2022. My main objective in this series is to win either the Premier League or the Champions League with a squad consisting mostly of Gunners academy graduates, such as Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka.
The Gunners made steady progress in my debut 2021/2022 season, finishing 4th in the Premier League to secure Champions League qualification. However, a disappointing end to the campaign hints that there is a lot of room for improvement. You can read the full story so far by revisiting Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Now, with the summer transfer window open, the great Arsenal rebuild can finally get started! It’s time to shift some of the deadwood… and unveil my first major signings!
How time flies! This is only the third chapter of my new FM22 series with Arsenal, and already we’re coming to the end of the 2021/2022 season!
Today’s installment is a bumper one, as we go through the January transfer window, meet my first youth intake, and recap the entire second half of the season. Can I lead Arsenal to a top-four finish and put us back in the Champions League? Can we lift the EFL Cup, or even the FA Cup? And most importantly of all… will we finish above Tottenham?
Obviously, if you haven’t read Part 2 yet, it might be a good idea to catch up on that first.
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…
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 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…
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…
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.
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…
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