Tag: Football Manager

FM Mythbusting: More Common Misconceptions

Published on by Chris FullerLeave a comment

Three years ago, I wrote an article that explained nine common misconceptions with Football Manager. For example, I stated the ‘wonderkid’ tag has much more to do with a youngster’s current ability than their potential, and that having a higher xG than the opposition doesn’t mean your team played better.

Of course, there are still some things about FM and football that many players – particularly new ones to the series – don’t fully understand. So I think it’s time to look at a few more of these… Continue reading “FM Mythbusting: More Common Misconceptions” →

Championship Manager Magazine: The Cover CDs

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Did you know that there used to be an official magazine dedicated to Championship Manager and Football Manager?

Two decades ago, Sports Interactive teamed up with Future Publishing to produce a series of magazines about the game we all know and love, selling it in various retailers across the UK. Future was (and still is) a British multimedia giant behind many successful publications, such as PC Zone and FourFourTwo.

The first issue of Championship Manager Magazine was released in October 2002 and included loads of screenshot and feature reveals about the newly-announced Championship Manager 4. Another four issues were published throughout 2003, featuring plenty of content for anyone who enjoyed CM4 and its sequel – Championship Manager 03/04.

Championship Manager as we knew it became Football Manager in 2004, when SI split up with Eidos and shacked up with SEGA. That year saw three issues of Football Manager Magazine hit the shelves, building up to the release of Football Manager 2005. Sadly, the magazine series was cancelled shortly afterwards.

I collected every issue and still have them all… but they are currently boxed up, in anticipation of a house move that has (for now) been put on hold. I’d like to learn how to scan these magazines and archive them for posterity one day, but that will have to wait.

Each magazine also came with a CD, which included various programs, utilities and tactics for CM fans to enjoy – and a few other goodies to boot. Unfortunately, it appears that nobody has archived them online… until now.

Earlier this month, I uploaded all eight of these CDs onto the Internet Archive. The archive boasts “the largest vintage and historical software library in the world”, which includes cover discs from various other computer magazines.

You can find links to all those files below. These can be downloaded as ISO images and then ‘mounted’ onto a virtual CD drive. If you’re running Windows 8.1 or later, you only need to double-click on an ISO file to mount it. If you’re running Windows 7 or earlier, you’ll need to use a third-party program such as WinCDEmu.

Continue reading “Championship Manager Magazine: The Cover CDs” →

Fake Players in Football Manager

Published on by Chris FullerLeave a comment

I once had a Western Digital hard drive sitting on the shelf above my desk. This came from the old Fuller family computer – a 1999 Viglen, on which I would spend a lot of time playing Championship Manager during my youth. When the Viglen died in 2010, I kept the hard drive.

A few years later, I tried to recover the data from the drive myself, only to be met by a load of lovely clicking sounds (not a good sign). Defeated, I reluctantly put it back on the shelf, where it gathered dust for the best part of a decade.

Earlier this year, I finally sent the drive off to a professional data recovery service. After waiting several months for them to find the right replacement parts, I was delighted when they brought my data back to life with a complete recovery! My old CM saves live on!

Anyway, while going through my CM archive and reliving my teenage memories, I stumbled across one particular save file from Championship Manager 00/01. This was a save file where all the real-life players were replaced with fake versions of themselves – goodbye Alessandro Del Piero, hello Federico Longo.

And this took me down a rabbit hole, into Championship Manager (and Football Manager)’s fiction factory… Continue reading “Fake Players in Football Manager” →

Looking Ahead To Football Manager 2024 (And 2025)

Published on by Chris FullerLeave a comment

It’s fair to say that, for some people, Football Manager 2023 has not lived up to expectations.

Despite record sales, FM23 received plenty of criticism over its lack of exciting new features, and Sports Interactive’s apparent reluctance to fix some long-standing bugs. Long-time players, including myself, have begun to wonder if the series is stagnating.

But good news is on the way! Last week, SI put out a lengthy blog post in which studio director Miles Jacobson discussed “The Future of Football Manager”. This development update gives us some exciting details about Football Manager 2024, which will be released later this year… and even gives us a taste of what we can expect in Football Manager 2025!

So, what do the next 18 months have in store for us FMers? Continue reading “Looking Ahead To Football Manager 2024 (And 2025)” →

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

Embed from Getty Images

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” →

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?” →

Assessing and developing youth intakes in Football Manager

Published on by Chris Fuller

fm22intake-intro

It’s youth intake day, and you’re hyped for a potential golden generation. You’re dreaming about bringing through a 200 PA striker who will make Erling Haaland look like Yaya Sanogo. Then you open up that inbox message…

“Pfft, the best players only have 3* potential. They’ll never make it. What’s our Head of Youth Development doing – rounding up random kids at bus stops?”

Back in 2020, I wrote an FM Mythbusting article about youth intakes, where I explained what a ‘golden generation’ exactly is, and why even the best academies don’t churn out wonderkids every year. I also gave some advice on improving your academy and increasing the chances of your club producing quality talent.

Today, I’m going to expand on that. I’ll show you how to assess your intake players and decide which ones are worth signing – and why you shouldn’t blindly trust the star ratings. There’ll also be some tips on how to develop your new talents, even those who don’t immediately look like hot prospects. Continue reading “Assessing and developing youth intakes in Football Manager” →