Is English LLM Dead?

To clarify straight off the bat, I'm talking about hardcore LLM here, not just managing a team somewhere down the leagues.

With West Ham appointing Gianfranco Zola as manager and so many other Premier League clubs looking to foreign managers or ex-Premiership players with no management experience it seems the days of managers from the 2nd or 3rd tier of English football being offered jobs in the EPL are pretty much dead now. I know Paul Ince is an exception to this, but not a serious one. He spent ~18 months managing in League 2 and was then catapulted into the Blackburn job, but this would never have happened if he wasn't a former Premier League player - he just took a slightly slower route to get there than the likes of Roy Keane and Gareth Southgate (and I admired him for getting on with it and doing that).

Coming back to the point of LLM though, it is supposed to be all about realism and one of the "rules" is that you start out with the lowest reputation (i.e. you aren't a Paul Ince with an EPL player background). So basically LLM will either never lead you to the top or you will be taking what is now, in modern football, an unrealistic route - either you take some crappy little club up from the Conference North to the EPL which will never happen again (in my opinion) in real life without someone pouring cash at a club on a whim or you get offered a job at an EPL club when you are in League 1 or The Championship and you accept that and have then moved away from your path of realism.

Personally I like having a savegame where I start at the bottom, but I never take notice of the LLM rules of the LLM forum, partly because I don't believe in the realism argument behind some of them and partly because I prefer to set my own guidelines anyway, but for real hard core LLMers surely the realism argument has gone out the window now when managing in England unless you spend your whole career in the leagues below The Championship?

The only way nowadays to get to Premiership from LLM is to simply win promotion there yourself.

Whenever I do it I have had to regularly jump ship every chance I got to get up a level.

In FM terms, surely it's a reputation thing? The reputation of sub-top level clubs isn't as attractive as a) the successful manager of the foreign club or b) the reputation of a former star.

Certainly in FM at the moment (or at least in FM07) the reputation of former players is often not sufficiently high in my experience to get the bigger jobs. Plus FM gives a bias towards the human manager anyway when offering jobs (I assume - as otherwise you'd never get a job if you start unemployed) so you will always be able to take a route to the top, it's just that it'll no longer be a realistic route => you aren't playing LLM, you're just going for a jolly up the leagues.

Certainly in FM at the moment (or at least in FM07) the reputation of former players is often not sufficiently high in my experience to get the bigger jobs. Plus FM gives a bias towards the human manager anyway when offering jobs (I assume - as otherwise you'd never get a job if you start unemployed) so you will always be able to take a route to the top, it's just that it'll no longer be a realistic route => you aren't playing LLM, you're just going for a jolly up the leagues.

I don't get what you are trying to get at, glamdring.

Like you have mentioned that if FM was to be as realistic as possible to real life football management, than none of us would be able to get a job as a manager in even the most obscure league in the world, simply because we don't have the experience and requirements for a manager. FM is still a game and always will be a game, and its purpose is to simulate football management as realisticly as possible while at the same time finding a balance for fun as after all, that's what a game is about, having fun.

With regards to the first post in the thread, I don't think English LLM is dead at all. I think due to the circumstances and many other factors, certain former players get the nod over a manager in League 2 (for example) due to factors that range from the obvious to the most unimaginable.

I think success has to do with it all, even if it seems obvious. If you look at the achievements of the teams in the lower leagues of England, there's nothing really that stands out, at least not in convincing numbers, that would attract top tier club directors to think twice in appointing the manager of the given lower league club.

I'm talking about playing by LLM guidelines, not just general play. The fact that the whole idea of any of us being a football manager at all is totally unrealistic is one of the reasons I don't take the LLM guidelines seriously myself, but still, there are lots of people who play by those guidelines because they feel they make the game realistic, but since it isn't realistic any more then LLM in England is pretty much dead.

I'm talking about playing by LLM guidelines, not just general play. The fact that the whole idea of any of us being a football manager at all is totally unrealistic is one of the reasons I don't take the LLM guidelines seriously myself, but still, there are lots of people who play by those guidelines because they feel they make the game realistic, but since it isn't realistic any more then LLM in England is pretty much dead.

I think you are just bored of FM at the moment and are in need of a new spark.

This brings me back to the game point in the previous post. Keep in mind that FM is a game, and so treat it as a game. I think you are expecting too much of FM in terms of realism and levels that are beyond comprehension in the world of FM.

I think that most English managers are seen as dull and old-fashioned, if they were not renowned as players.

Sam Allardyce, Alan Curbishley, Steve McLaren, Neil Warnock, Paul Jewell etc would not be touched with a barge-pole by most premier league teams, despite all having decent top-flight experience. They're just not fashionable enough. Even someone like Harry Redknapp will never be appointed at one of the big 4 clubs despite his recent managerial record.

Realistically, even if you are an excellent manager, it would take most of your career to work your way up the leagues, and even then you will never get to the upper echeolons of the premier league.

Only 2 of the managers I mentioned (Allardyce and Warnock) could be said to have started off as LLM. I'd like to hear more examples.

I started my last game as an ex semi-pro at Harrogate and got them into League Two after five seasons. In that time I didn't get any other job offers and was only linked once to a vacant post. In some ways I thought this was a bit unrealistic, as surely a few League Two and maybe League One clubs would have taken notice. In other ways I thought fair enough, as managers such as Nigel Clough have spent all their time in the Conference.

What I'd like to see is a more differentiated profile at the beginning of the game.

For example, you choose what the highest level was you played at and when you quit and why (injury etc)

The game could then create a history for you, listing which clubs you played for (possibly a one-man club and therefore having legend status at that club, or a journeyman with several clubs) and maybe what you did after you stopped playing - maybe as a youth coach / coach somewhere. This could then have a bearing on your relationships with other clubs etc. Maybe as an ex-player you'd be offered the manager's job if you did well elsewhere.

I think that most English managers are seen as dull and old-fashioned, if they were not renowned as players.

Sam Allardyce, Alan Curbishley, Steve McLaren, Neil Warnock, Paul Jewell etc would not be touched with a barge-pole by most premier league teams, despite all having decent top-flight experience. They're just not fashionable enough. Even someone like Harry Redknapp will never be appointed at one of the big 4 clubs despite his recent managerial record.

Realistically, even if you are an excellent manager, it would take most of your career to work your way up the leagues, and even then you will never get to the upper echeolons of the premier league.

Only 2 of the managers I mentioned (Allardyce and Warnock) could be said to have started off as LLM. I'd like to hear more examples.

I believe Martin O'Neil started off with Wycombe in the Non League bringing them into the League then promotion again before going to Leicester.

But your right enought - it is hard to work up through the Leagues in real life as a Manager. But don't you think it has become the same with players too?

At one time if a player was a regular goalscorer a 'big' team would get him, not now. Championship sides are the highest they can hope for and even those teams prefer EPL cast offs.