Football Manager 2009 Full Feature List so far

FM2009 FULL FEATURE LIST SO FAR...because i'm bored

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First off, the stuff that was announced in the original press release and the announcement video. You can tell that these were written by someone who writes press releases for a living, compared to the descriptions of the latter features.

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3D Match Engine – This year’s match engine has seen more testing than ever before having been extensively beta tested in Football Manager™ Live for the past year.

The famous Football Manager match engine can now be viewed in full 3D with motion captured animations the players. Sports Interactive has been working on the 3D match engine with the support of SEGA Japan’s Sega sports team who provided the motion capture data.

You can now watch your matches in 3D from multiple camera angles and re-watch any part of the match by fast forwarding and rewinding the action using a new match time bar that flags the key moments in the game.

The old 2D view of the match engine is still there, especially for those people whose computers aren’t powerful enough to take advantage of the 3D views.

TV View – Watch your matches in new full screen TV view and customise your match day screen with widgets to view the information you need as a football manager, be it player performance, match action zones, pitch radar, latest scores and many more.

Assistant Manager Feedback – Pre-match and in-match feedback from your Assistant Manager on how the team is performing and your player’s motivation levels, as well as hints on how your tactics are working and how you could outwit the opposition’s tactics.

Improved Media – SI have worked hard to reflect the greater impact the media has been having in recent years on the world of football, in the in-game dealings with the press. The game now features more news stories, more detail and greater media interaction than ever before, creating an even more realistic simulation of the football world.

Press Conferences – Attend pre-match and post-match press conferences with local and national journalists and build up relationships with them over time, but choose your answers carefully because they could come back to haunt you in the media at a later date.

Transfer System – Completely new and re-written transfer system code, providing an even more realistic simulation of real-life football transfers.

Transfer Rumours – View the latest news on what players are being speculated on, and who’s said to be interested in securing their services.

Board Confidence – Following on from its addition in Football Manager™ 2008, board confidence has been expanded and improved. In addition, the board will now also feedback to you on your squad harmony and the club’s stature in the football world.

Preferred Moves – Train your players to learn ‘preferred moves’ to add to their game. For example, train central defenders to not dive into tackles, or wingers to do stepovers before crossing the ball.

Female Manager – For the very first time you can now play as a female manager. All of the text in the game now also has a female gender so the game represents female managers and staff in the game in the correct gender.

Realistic Finances – SI have listened to feedback from all of their researchers to try and model every single financial area of the game correctly for each country, including transfers, staff wages, budgets, ticket prices, season tickets, competition bonuses and club sponsorships.

Updated Competitions – Fully updated for the new 2008/09 football season with all the latest league, club and player data, featuring over 5,000 playable clubs from over 50 countries, and around 350,000 players and staff from around the world, drawn fresh from the famous Sports Interactive database.

Widescreen Support – As a result of usability testing on Football Manager 2008, this year sees widescreen support for the game for the first time, as well as lots of tweaks to the user interface for easier navigation.

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The night of the announcement, I made another little announcement on our forums (community.sigames.com) about improvements made to the player progression area of the game...

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Player Progression / New-gen Improvements - Improvement to the player progression module to give more realistic player development, more variation in the player learning curves, wonderkids starting as better players to ensure that clubs realise their worth and more effect to the attribute development based on the training schedules that are set.

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Then a day later, there were some specific new features for the MLS in the US of A.

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MLS new features - Designated player rule added to ensure that the teams with more financial backing are able to sign one player outside the designated wage fund, or two by gaining another designated player slot in a trade. You can also offer your designated player slot to other clubs.

Allocation funds can also be offered to other MLS clubs in a trade, with $1 of the Allocation fund being worth $5 in transfers between MLS teams.

Transfer budgets now only change when an allocation is awarded - these are awarded in 2 ways in FM09, if a team fails to make the play-offs, and if a MLS team sells a player (the former is $300,000 and the latter limited to $500k)

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On the first podcast was some more info than I'd revealed before on player progression, but that's up above in there, so four more features were announced on top of that.

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In Depth Player Ratings - Player ratings now out have a decimal point, for more indepth analysis on how a player has performed

Position viewer - On the tactics screen, indication on how good a player is in a specific position using a traffic light system, so if a player can play as right back, but it's not his best position, it might be an orangey yellowey colour, red is he's rubbish there, and green if it's his best position (with apologies to people who are colourblind - we couldn't find a better way to do it).

Injury time scorers - Game now shows injury time goals with "+x" rather than them all being in the 90th minute

AI team trials - AI manager can now sign players on trial

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Now, let's test whether people are actually reading this or not. Something that was seen by some in screenshots, but hasn't actually been confirmed by me that I can find and is therefore kind of a new feature on this blog...

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Trial days - Scoutable and viewable match where players released by their club play against each other arranged by the players union.

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The 2nd podcast revealed the following.

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Enquire to loan a player - Sends a virtual fax out to all clubs to see which players they would be prepared to loan you. Can also be done per club

Feeder club improvements - The ability, once your board trusts you, to ask for a specific feeder club/parent club.

Holiday job returning options - Option added to apply only for jobs in the top playable division, bottom playable division, lower division jobs, and any job.

Distrance run - A new stat that shows how far a player has run per match

Team report improvements - Team report now suggests new players for weak areas of the team

Awards - Team awards now have a history rather than just showing the last winner. Likee the best XI, they can be combined into an overall team for all the years stored.

Average ratings - Players who play less than 10 minutes no longer get ratings that can take down their average rating

B Teams - Are now treated are affiliate clubs, rather than reserve teams for teams in countries where they might have 2 teams in different first team leagues (Spain / Barcelona, for example)

Stadium expansion - Now starts after last home game of the season, so stadium expansions are built quicker

Age and transfer rules - Age rules for different competitions are now displayed for each comp as are transfer rules, such as the French "Joker" rule

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In podcast 3, 7 new features...

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New sound - Added new sound effects to the match engine

Referee watch - Pundits comment on refs performance in the post match screen.

Reject all loan offers - Option to reject all loan offers when a bid comes in, rather than having to go through each bid individually.

Retired squad numbers - Squad numbers that are retired in real life are retired in the game. User can retire squad numbers after they've been at a club after many years of service.

Inactive team improvements - Ensuring that inactive teams play enough matches, so that players on loan get full first team seasons.

Improvements to player nationality module - Players now gain nationality after x years and become eligible to play for nations after y years (depending on individual rules in countries).

Pre game injury history - Players now have past injuries from pre-game in their histories

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In podcast 4...

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Goalscorers shown in Fixtures/Results screen - Goalscorers are now shown in the Team fixtures page along with the score.

Team panel Information - More Information on Team Panel screen but was not revelaed.

Transfer Panel - More Info about transfer for each league and nation

Player Achievements - Players now have Player Achievements so you can see what awards and trophies they have won in there career.

Improvements on Loan signing - Players will now sign on a permanent deal more often after being on loan to a club.

View Match Option - You can now leave a match you are viewing at any time ie if you are scouting a player during a match you can leave at half time.

Press Conferance Custom Comments - You can now create your own comments in press conferances ie Joe Kinnear (yes you can swear)

Coach Reports Improved - Reports now are more in depth with more variaty. With all the players positions now in a drop down menu.

Finance Information - More information added to World Finance screen.

Competition Fixtures - You can now filter fixtures to show all the fixtures from certain competitions.

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From Blog number 4...

So, where to start. I've just asked Marc at SI to pick a random number between 1 & 6, and he went for 4, which means there'll be 4 new features metioned in this blog.

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Let's start off with international "national pool" improvements. For those who like to manage international teams in the game, this will save them lots of time, as the multi-select actions on the national pool window have been improved to make moving players around national squads easier.

Which actually brings me onto something else, something that's been in the game for years, but someone brought up on our forums this weekend as a "good idea for the future", followed by lots of others that didn't realise that you could do it in game. You know when you are using email software, you can select multiple emails by holding down "ctrl" when clicking on them, and using "shift" to select a block of emails? You can do that in FM aswell, by clicking on the arrows to the left of a players name, or a news item name. It surprised me that people didn't know about it already but hey, who reads manuals nowadays, huh? If I read manuals, I'd be much better at putting IKEA furniture together, but it would take half the fun away, but we do spend a lot of time on the manuals for our games, and you will likely learn new stuff from reading them.

Anyway, I disgree. Another couple of nice little touches with the game this year are to do with "Generated players" those being players that don't exist in real life, but spring onto the world football stage through the game in future seasons. The first is for players to have more likelike common names for players who like to be known by their nicknames, as many South American players do as their names are so long. Although some of them take it a bit far in real life, with players called Ice Cream and Potato in our database!

Second natioanlities are also now generated for these generated players, so you'll find more Argentinian youngsters with Italian parents, and more players in the future having to decide which nation they want to represent, their own, or their parents.

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From Blog number 6

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Let's start off with preferred squad numbers. If a player has a preferred squad number, you'll now see this when you register your squad numbers for the season.

A personal favourite of mine is something really simple, but very useful. In the game, you've had the possibility for many years of adding on a percentage sell on clause for a player, but having done some research into this, many clubs now utilise a percentage of profit sell on clause. So it's only fair that we add that as an option in game too.

Another favourite is changes to the way youth compensation happens in the game. Previously, you've just paid a small fee to "steal" a youngster from another club, but this became a hot topic in the Summer with the transfer of Bostock to Spurs, so you'll find now that as well as paying an upfront fee, you'll also have to pay for first team appearances, and a sell on percentage.

There are also improved qualification rules in the game, so the more complicated rules are explained better, such as in the Asian leagues and South American leagues.

Have I mentioned yet that 3 new goalkeeper attributes are shown in Football Manager 2009? First touch, free kick taking and penalty taking are now there, what with more and more goalkeepers taking free kicks and penalties, particularly in South America, they're important things to know now.

Oh, and I don't think I've mentioned roaming scouting either. Unless you specify areas for your scouts to go to, they will choose themselves where to roam, and continue to give you summaries of players that they find.

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Shortlist.com Exclusive Feature No 1

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Anyway, our first feature (actually there are three rolled into one) is all about the pitches. There are three new elements related to the hallowed turf of your home ground.

Re-laying - You now have the ability to request to re-lay the pitch to ensure a silky smooth playing

surface. Or you could let it go all JJB.

Pitch degredation - This feature tracks the condition of the pitch during the season (possibly leading to the above).

Fixture postponements - Part of the pitch degradation module, this can lead to cancellations for bad weather and waterlogging (and probably those annual stories of fans travelling from Plymouth to Darlington only to have to turn round and head straight back)

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Shortlist.com Exclusive Feature No 2

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Anyway, our second feature is about awarding the best of the best...

Best XI

As you may have noticed in last year's Football Manager 2008, at the end

of the season you had a 'Best XI' which showed your clubs best XI since

the start of the game. This year, with Football Manager 2009, all the

best XI's in the game get a rating, so you can see how your best ever XI

compares to those of other teams around the world. So, that's either added bragging rights all round, then, or digs about "living in the past" from the Johnny-come-latelys.

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Shortlist.com Exclusive Feature No 3

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6 new camera angles for the 3D match engine

Here is a link to the 6 new camera angles http://www.shortlist.com/gaming/article/fm09-exclusive-feature-no-3

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Shortlist.com Exclusive Feature No 4

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Anyway, here's exclusive number four: some new news items you'll be getting.

New news

During the announcement video for Football Manager 2009, Sports

Interactive revealed that they'd improved the media side of things in

the series, with press conferences and other improvements.

Some of the other improvements include some new news items, such as when

a host for a major tournament is decided, club history news items, a

round up of some of the players who have been released by their clubs, a

match incident news item and a squad registration news item.

On top of that, new information has been added to many news items,

including whilst negotiating transfers, the assistant manager team

report (with information on the weakest ares of the team, and potential

targets) and transfer news.

this game is going to be pretty awesome, its just a shame its not out tomorrow

Thanks for that

Thanks for that

No problem

Yeah good work Navie.

Good job!!!

good work.

excellent. something that si should have done themselves though. Slackers!

excellent. something that si should have done themselves though. Slackers!

Ter,did say somewhere that they would release a list later

Brilliant work! Must have taken a long time!

Wow i am wetting myself in anticipation.

Wow i am wetting myself in anticipation.

are you drunk.... (joke)

good job!!

Awesome, thanks for this.

good work my friend

WOOOP!

thats alot of features!

Its going to be great.

Great Work!

nice job now i know exactly what to expect!

There was things in that list that i didn't know. thanks for doing this.

Thanks for the sum up since some of us haven't had time to tune in and read all about the latest features. Not only that, but sheer laziness comes into play sometimes.

The feature list looks good so far. Thanks again.

What about the Editor? any Improvement?

Good work on the list, there's alot of additions there that I had missed

Looking forward for the demo tomorrow

EDIT. Can anyone tell me if there will be an option to scout all players from a selected club, as opposed to scouting each player individually (i.e. checking out your feeder clubs etc).

Of course I could just wait until tomorrow to see

Thank you Naive, I wanted something like that

nice one thanks

Very exited about this years release - Any chance of Si bringing the game out this Friday 1 weeks early.

If you did I would love you forever!!!

brilliant stuff mate. so many new features in this year's game.

10 hours 59 minutes

Great post , thanks for that . Really helpful and a good read

Will we be able to see how much each attribute are worth in CA points with the editor, just like the research tool ?

I'm happy people are finding the list useful...thank SI for all the features

Really useful. Cheers.