Category: Guides

FM Mythbusting: The Mid-Season Slump

Published on by Chris Fuller

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. Continue reading “FM Mythbusting: The Mid-Season Slump” →

Using shouts in Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller

Embed from Getty Images

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. Continue reading “Using shouts in Football Manager” →

Preparing for pre-season on Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller

Embed from Getty Images

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. Continue reading “Preparing for pre-season on Football Manager” →

Setting up a new game on Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller

Football Manager 2021 is being released in just a few days’ time. While thousands of FMers are already getting stuck into the beta, many of us are already thinking of what our first save game will be after the game officially drops on Tuesday 24 November.

There are a lot of questions we ask ourselves before creating a new football universe? How many leagues do I want? How many players? Can my computer cope with it? And, most importantly, will the game run fast enough for me to enjoy?

I hope this guide will give you some useful tips and advice for when you go into the save creation process. Continue reading “Setting up a new game on Football Manager” →

FM Mythbusting: First Goal of the Season!

Published on by Chris Fuller

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If you play Football Manager, you’ve probably seen the commentator say this line countless times before: “It’s his first goal of the season!”

Imagine the scenario. It’s April, the season’s almost over, and you’re up against some bang-average mid-table defender who suddenly pops up and opens his account for the campaign. Or maybe it’s that misfiring striker who makes Rudy Gestede look like Robert Lewandowski, but who finally breaks his duck on the day he happens to be playing your team.

Some FMers might cry conspiracy. Some might say that the game buffs certain players’ attributes to boost their chances of scoring against them, or even that the developers have written some secret code to make this happen.

In today’s installment of FM Mythbusting, I’m going to use real-life English league data to show you just how regularly these “first-goals” are scored. I’ll then see how that compares to an average Football Manager save. Continue reading “FM Mythbusting: First Goal of the Season!” →

FM Mythbusting: Youth Intakes

Published on by Chris Fuller1 Comment

youth-intake-previewOne of the most exciting days in the Football Manager calendar is the day when your club’s youth intake arrives. This latest batch of newgens will lead to boundless optimism or incredible disappointment – or something in between.

If your latest batch of youngsters hasn’t excited you, don’t lose hope. That ‘average’ right-back you’ve written off as someone who should quit football and become a bus driver might still become a useful asset. But even if he doesn’t, there are still some things you can try to boost your team’s chances of producing a more exciting intake next time.

In today’s guide, I will give you some tips on how to properly assess your youth candidates and improve your academy. I’ll also look to bust a few myths along the way, using some real-life scenarios. Continue reading “FM Mythbusting: Youth Intakes” →

FM Mythbusting: Being “FMed”

Published on by Chris Fuller2 Comments

it-happensWe all love Football Manager, don’t we? Yet there is one complaint that always crops up year after year.

Here’s the scenario. You’ve just played through a match where your team has been absolutely dominant, for want of a better word. You’ve had 30 shots at goal, 60% of possession, an 85% pass completion rate… but the opposition won 1-0, scoring from their only shot in the entire game.

Congratulations, you have just been “FMed” (or “FM’d”, if you’d prefer to spell it that way). Now what?

You could assume that something’s wrong with Football Manager. You could even vent your frustration on social media, or on the Sports Interactive forums – or even on Reddit, where grown adults turn into temperamental teenagers with anger management issues. I mean… a result like that would never occur in real football, would it?

What if I told you that this actually happens more often than you think? What if I pointed out that your FM team’s inability to turn ‘dominance’ into a result might actually be down to your tactical decisions?

This article will not tell you how to stop your team from being “FMed” ever again. This will simply explain why such lop-sided results can happen in Football Manager and in real football. It’s time for some FM mythbusting… Continue reading “FM Mythbusting: Being “FMed”” →

Taking screenshots in Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller

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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: This is NOT a screenshot.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that a lot of people in the Football Manager community – whether on the Sports Interactive forums or on Twitter – don’t take screenshots ‘properly’. Whenever they want to take a picture of their FM career for posterity, they literally take a picture with their mobile phone, tablet or (gasp) camera.

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that old-school method. However, there are multiple ways to use your computer to take clearer, higher-definition images of what is on the screen. At a time when more people than ever are computer-literate, there are hardly any excuses for not taking advantage of that.

This quick guide will show you a number of methods for taking screenshots and sharing them online. A lot of you will already be familiar with these techniques, but if you aren’t, then perhaps this will enlighten you.

Continue reading “Taking screenshots in Football Manager” →

Changing stadium and player names in Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller12 Comments

As great a game as Football Manager is, some of the generated stadium names are a bit naff, aren’t they? If new stadia aren’t named after club legends (e.g. Alf Ramsey Park for Ipswich), they are usually given totally uninspired monikers (such as the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium… oh, hang on a minute).

Of course, these new stadiums can be renamed using FM’s in-game editor or a third-party program such as FMRTE. But what if you don’t want to fork out for an in-game editor – or, like me, you have absolutely no interest in using one?

Fortunately, there is a cheap alternative that is quite easy to learn, though some of you might not be too familiar with it.

If you use a real-name fix (such as the one on Sortitoutsi), you will probably know about LNC files, which are just text files with a different file extension. They can easily be created and edited using a basic text-editing program such as Notepad (on Windows) or TextEdit (on Mac).

LNC files allow you to change the names of any stadia in your game, as well as any people, competitions, clubs, and even nations. One of the great things about them is that they can take effect in existing save games as well as new ones. Continue reading “Changing stadium and player names in Football Manager” →

Keeping your save files safe in Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller2 Comments

Those are the seven words every Football Manager player dreads reading. We’ve all been there. You’re 20 seasons into your FM career and are about to lead Blyth Spartans into their first Champions League Final when you realise – to your horror – that the save file has been corrupted.

My worst experiences with this date back to Football Manager 2007. A career with Millwall in League One corrupted within a few in-game months, and I also lost an Arsenal save shortly after winning the League Cup with them. On both occasions, I didn’t have any backups to – pardon the pun – fall back on.

Once bitten, twice shy. Twice bitten, third time determined to never let it happen ever again. I have always taken precautions from FM11 onwards, and I haven’t had a single save game corrupt on me since.

I hope this guide helps you to back up your own Football Manager careers and protect them against corruption (that’s the data file kind, not the Manchester City kind):

Continue reading “Keeping your save files safe in Football Manager” →