offline gaming

Apologies in advance if this is in the wrong place.

Been playing FM (before champy) since domark days and just recently purchased FM09. installed it on my laptop, as i work away from home alot and is ideal for lonely evenings.

However, my problem is that when i load up the game the first thing it does is update my steam acc. This is all very well but due to some of the locations i'm at, i am not always able to connect to internet. This means the game wont load. i have looked in steam settings but cant seem to find a way to disable this. Any help would be much apprieciated.

Theres a work offline setting in steam I believe, in file in top left corner, I don't use steam so can't check but I did this for a friend once

Steam has an offline mode option. Alternatively, you could make a FM09 shortcut on your desktop, this will bypass opening steam altogether.

Yeh make sure you have the disk with you and choose offline mode from the steam icon.

I have already created an FM shortcut but when opening it, it still connects to steam for an update. i'll try the offline mode. thanks for all your help. is it possible to uninstall steam as i dont play games online so cant see any need for it?

From the FAQs:

I've installed though Steam, do I have to run the game through Steam each time I want to play?

No you don't, you can create a shortcut to Football Manager 2009 without having to use Steam. Go to:

C:\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Football Manager 2009\

and right click the fm.exe file and choose "send to desktop (create shortcut)"