Author: Chris Fuller

If you’ve been playing Football Manager for a while, you might have a good idea of what works and why. But there are always a few gaps in our knowledge – a few areas where we can still learn. Hey, I’ve been playing since Championship Manager 3 in 1999, but I couldn’t tell you what a carrilero does!

If you are rather newer to the series, though, there are some things about FM you might believe are true when they actually aren’t. A player with 6 Finishing isn’t necessarily a bad striker. Three minutes of injury time doesn’t always mean three minutes. And of course, having more shots doesn’t mean you should score more goals.

In today’s post, I’ll be discussing nine common Football Manager misconceptions and misunderstandings. Most of these are specifically about FM, but there are also a few rules and regulations from real-life football that some FMers may not fully understand.

Just to be clear, I’ve not written about anything related to tactics. One of the tactical gurus on the Sports Interactive forums has already written about 20 common misconceptions when building tactics in FM, so please give that a read as well.

Imagine this Football Manager scenario. You are halfway through the season, and your team is flying near the top of the league after an incredible run of form that’s confounded all expectations.

And then… bam. As soon as you enter the second half of the campaign, your team suddenly stops playing, and you hit a shocking run of losses that send you tumbling down the table.

Some people in the FM community might say that the game is programmed to generate more drama to stop your team running away with a league title. Some might even claim that it’s ‘scripted’ to trip your team up if things are going too well.

What if I told you that these mid-season slumps are fixable – and even avoidable? In today’s edition of FM Mythbusting, I will explain how and why teams can go off the boil after making a strong start. I’ll then give some advice on what you can do to stop this happening to yours.

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We’ve all shouted at our players at some point when playing Football Manager. Well, actually, it’s not so much “shouting at our players” as it is “screaming profanities at a computer screen as our significant other enters the room and wonders what the hell we’re getting so worked up about”.

Of course, I’m not discussing actual shouting in this post. I’m talking about those in-game ‘shouts’, which you can use as motivational tools to give your team the mental edge over the competition.

At various points, you may need to deal with players who are looking anxious, aggressive or arrogant, and use appropriate shouts to raise their confidence, calm them down, or refocus their minds. You can also criticise your team when they’re underperforming, and even drop some praise when they deserve it.

You have eight shouts at your disposal on Football Manager 2021. Some of you probably only use two or three, but every option has its merits and drawbacks, which I will explain below.

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Pre-season is an often underrated but very important part of Football Manager. It’s during those first few weeks of a new campaign that you have arguably the best chance to set your team up for a successful year.

Your players will return from their post-season holidays refreshed but unfit. It’s up to you to sharpen them up physically and tactically through training and friendlies, so that they can perform to high standards from the first league game onwards. If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.

In this article, I will give you some tips for an effective pre-season, while also taking you through how I typically get ready for a new campaign. This isn’t a silver bullet that works for every team, but if you roughly follow my advice, you can’t go too far wrong.