Shocking lack of official documentation with Football Manager

Am I the only person who is completely amazed by the lack of official documentation for the FM series. Why isn't there some official guide made by the developers explaining how all this stuff works, surely in a game this complicated a guide to how everything is supposed to work together is vital for any player.

Now before anyone mentions these forums, with all due respect to the contributors here, there are so many 'theories' on the different elements of the game it is impossible to know what is right and what is just complete nonsense. Maybe it's me but I want a official guide to the game, written by the people who make the game and who actually know how everything comes to together.

Why isn't there a prima guide or something along those lines for FM, for example something along the lines of the Civilization guides you can buy. I want to understand all the features, how different attributes work together, how to get the best out of the match engine but there doesn't seem to be enough official documentation from the developers to even remotely explain anything but the most fundamental aspects of the game.

Does anyone else feel this way at all?

Agree totally... why SI doesn't publish any strategy guide or helper guide is beyond me.

There used to be a site that published something similar, but they charge for it now?

I bought the game retail and all it has is an explanation of the preference screen.

Pity the people that doesn't know to come to this forum to find information...

Do you think the real lilfe managers have a guidebook to show them how its done?

football is about gut and personal taste, no guidebook is needed!

There was an online manual last year and will be one for this year.

Because they have an in-game tutorial thingy, besides, I'm gonna go on a limb here and say that if you've bought a Football management game, you have SOME idea of what's going on, no one ever details everything in their manual, it's up to the player to discover certain features, can you imagine the length of such manual if they detailed every little thing ?

There's simply no need for such documentation.

Also, I seem to remember one or two guides for the earlier versions of FM (or was it CM ?) but it was so pointless that it was sad to see people work for nothing, the beautiful thing about FM (and again, CM back in the day) is the community, we don't need a 288 page manual to explain how Strength affects the morale of a young footballer in Zimbabwe, but if you want to know such things, you can quite easily ask around here and people WILL help you.

And I can't stress how awful your suggestion is for SI to release "prima guides" and SELL them, mind you some asshats did that in the pretense of "helping out". (FM Britain)

Edit:

Didn't realize there was an online manual, perhaps because I never searched for one, but oh well, there you go, there is in fact a manual.

I am aware of the online manual but again it doesn't tell you anything more than the ingame help system which is quite frankly completely pointless.

I don't understand how anyone can say there is no need for a manual, that to me is crazy. How are you supposed to know how everything relates and works together. You only have to take a quick glance at the forums to see how many people are completely confused by even some of the most basic aspects of the game and how they work together. All it takes is one simple misunderstanding of a simple attribute and your whole premise behind what you do is completely screwed!

What I am asking for is simple official clarification on the how everything works together. I just finished reading a post where people were talking about goalkeepers and what attributes are needed etc. Turns out that what people thought was correct isn't at all, it was only when a researcher casually mentioned something about a particular attribute being very important that anyone even knew! This is the kind of stuff I am talking about, the players should have this information, otherwise all people are doing is making a series of guesses on how they think stuff works.