which type of manager will succeed

I have just had a heated conversation with someone who has never played FM and has no interest in football what so ever. He seems to think he would be able to beat most people at FM by simply looking at stats and calculating things like tactics, players and finances logically. I completely disagreed. My argument is.... To a certain degree I agree, however someone who has great football knowledge obviously gains a huge advantage.... i.e which players to buy in transfer market, which tactics suit your players etc.

So my question is do you need good football knowledge to play FM at a high standard or can you simply play the game by looking at stats and calculating your way to success? Which manager would succeed......

it is a mixture of the two imho. i mean you could pick the best teams etc if you had no football knowledge by picking based on media predictions. in terms of players, you could easily see the best players in terms of value and maybe stats, but he may overlook players such as benzema, he is arguably one of the greatest young strikers in the world but some of his stats may cause him to be overlooked.

A good example of footballing knowledge is:

I signed Nihat because I know he's world-class, but he'd never show up on the "normal" player search filters due to his low (7-9) Composure...

Nihat has scored about 20 in 15 apps for me as Man City by the way, so he is rather amazing

Would someone with a total lack of knowledge know what stats to look for in particular positions? I think the best manager is one who can synergise the two, as one extreme or the other will leave you crippled in one area. Successful, but not the best you can be.

That's what we all do. We see the stats, the tactics and the finances. We're doing this having football on our minds, but in the end we focus on numbers and charts, that's the nature of the game. Very interesting thread, by the way.

I think ChrisCryptic has a good opinion.It will be difficult for a guy who has no matter with soccer when choosing a player after stats and number becouse for certain positions there are stats which values much more than others. It also will take much more time for somebody with no soccer exp. to do what the other type does. but if the no socceer type reads the manual of the game then it will be closer. The fact is that someone who doesn't like soccer and play FM09 won't do it with the same pleasure as the other one, and that's way he will loose some details. And FM09 is details. I think that Weller1980 is right and for his friend: it is easy to say that, but when you'll play it you'll see the difference between you and Weller1980, the same between UEFA Ccup and UCL respectively

Would someone with a total lack of knowledge know what stats to look for in particular positions? I think the best manager is one who can synergise the two, as one extreme or the other will leave you crippled in one area. Successful, but not the best you can be.

I asked the person this question, how would he know what stats to look for in a particular position, his answer was of course again logical, he said it would be a simple case of elimination and comparing other players who play in the same position, the more I think about it, the more I think he is right, all the answers are staring you in the face........

Someone without any football knowledge would just buy the expensive, well known ones.

Very interesting issue I think. And I also think your friend is a smart guy. The whole "looking at other players in the same position" is a good move, one I employ myself actually, even after having played many of CM/FM games throughout the years. Although, wouldn't this lead him to actually becoming more proficient in football tactics and knowledge? Put in other words, wouldn't that be him "reading up" on football before actually playing the game?

I'm not so sure your friend wouldn't do as well as you would if you were both managing lower league teams and you didn't have the opportunity to look at other teams/players for the purpose to learn about tactics and players vs position. Eventually your friend would learn, I am sure, but in the short run you'd probably have more success than he. That is my thoughts on the matter at least.

Except there comes a time in every managers life, where even with the right tactics, the right players, you lose. If you don't like football are you really gonna put up with that? Your friend also kind of assumes the two are mutually exclusive. You can like football AND stats.

Challenge him to a game without using real players.

Even with real players, one of the great joys of lower league management - particularly in unfamiliar countries, is that you won't know any of the real-life players. You have rely on your FM nous to succeed.

Your friend would have one problem though, because there is something in football which you can't see in statisics and that is the unexpected.

If you however have a lot of football experience, you may be able to expect the unexpected (how paradoxial this may sound) and may revert it to your favor.