Football Manager - On The Rails

I've been playing Football Manager (and Championship Manager as it was) for a fair few years now and it's only after having played the current version and reading a lot of posts on this forum that I thought I'd add my musings.

Ok, just as a bit of a background, my current game has been going on the longest, I'm Liverpool manager and I'm in the year 2023. I've been fairly successful, won a number of premiership titles, champions leagues, world club cup championships, I've been England manager and won the world cup and I've just recently been the Brazil manager (but didn't do so well!). I've even moved to a new stadium that was named after me! I was very lucky to begin with in my career in that we got taken over by what could only be the worlds richest man - I had money literally coming out of my ears, and was able to make ridiculous signings, I've had Messi, Aguero, Ronaldo, Kaka, Bojan (bought, not signed on a free!) and Fabregas, pretty much all playing in the team at the same time. My transfer dealings have topped a billion!

Also, I may add, that I've hardly tinkered with the tactics at all! I play a bog standard 4-4-2, high tempo'd, direct passing, playmaker and target man.

Ok, where's the challenge in that I hear you say! Well, you know, I love Liverpool and this has been a dream come true to build a side that is total fantasy. I haven't cheated, I've just taken advantage of a very generous chairman. He did leave after a few years and then my transfer kitty went down to more reasonable amounts. My reckless transfer spending has got us into trouble a couple of times, with the team being docked points on two occasions due to going into recievership, the one time after we'd won the title (and losing the points, meant we lost it!), but we've always come through it and still been sucssessful.

The purpose of this post is just to highlight some things that I've found out on my travels through the years. Some of these people will already know about (and have complained about), but it's just my take on it. This is by no means a 'I hate FM post' - I love it, and spend alot of time on it (just ask the girlfriend!), these are just some points that could be easily addressed in future versions by allowing a little bit more freedom.

As my subject states, I this game has too many on the rails experiences. This comes about because of the new features that have been introduced, team talks, press conferences, player interaction. Because they are so tied down, they seem to restrictive and hence are the cause for complaint.

Examples then. Ok, let's take team talks (a highly contencious point!). Many a time it's been said but why can't we select from all possible options? The game is basically deciding what I can say to the team in any given situation. That's not management is it? And why is it that the assistant manager can say things that I can't? If I select assistant manager team talk at half time, it might say 'disappointing' but my equivilant options are 'expect nothing less than a win' - where did my 'anger' option go? Sometimes I do want to go ballastic at the team at half time, especially with the lazy players, but I'm not always afforded that. Maybe that's just the kind of manager I am, I go mad and scream and shout, and if I want to do that, then I'll take the repercussions as they come, be it the team hating me or rubbish performances. But I don't want the game making that decision for me.

I suppose the same can be said for manager interaction, why is it that I can't choose from all of the options when I want to say something to a manager or respond to a comment, the subset of choices are always decided for me.

What about discipling players? Why is it that the game decides when I can discipline a player for poor performance? Surely I should be able to decide what denotes a bad performance. If a player is rubbish first half and is on say a 4, but then second half get's to a 5.6, then I can't discipline him for a poor performance, despite say his first half performance costing us two goals and the match. Frustrating.

Transfer rumours are a nice touch, I've picked up a couple of good regens in the years when I've supposedly been linked to but hadn't researched. But why is it not possible to refute such claims? I've had news messages when the fans have expressed unease at the thought of a possible signing, and I just want to say 'I've never heard of him, and wouldn't ever consider signing him'! And when teams have targeting my players, why am I not able to put their mind at ease by saying personally to them 'look, I'm not selling you, ignore what you read in the papers'. Too many of my players get unsettled because of rumours but I can't do anything about them.

Learning new moves is another thing that gets to me. Why is it that players are allowed to say 'nah, I'm not learning that'? I'm the boss, do what I tell you to do! I could understand if I was an inexperienced manager, but with my track record now, I think I know what I'm talking about when I tell a player to stop blasting the ball when he's going to shoot'.

A new feature that I'd like to see (and I haven't thought this one out fully!) is club policies. Ok, for example, when I get a player with a cold or flu, I'm always asked if I want to send him home or have the physio look after it. In all my years, I don't think I've ever had a first teamer go down with either, it's always a reserve player, so I always send them home. It would be nice to say have a policy that you can set up that says anyone with a cold/flu gets sent home. Then you just get told in a news item 'player x has been sent home due to having a cold'. Then if it was a first teamer and you've got a major important game coming up, you can have an option to get them back in!

These are just a few things I've picked up on. I think all of them are people management issues, probably because my team has been fairly successful I haven't thought about the tactical side of things.

Apologies if I've repeated other posts.

I like the club policies idea

Would save us quite a few repetitive actions.

Examples then. Ok, let's take team talks (a highly contencious point!). Many a time it's been said but why can't we select from all possible options? The game is basically deciding what I can say to the team in any given situation. That's not management is it? And why is it that the assistant manager can say things that I can't? If I select assistant manager team talk at half time, it might say 'disappointing' but my equivilant options are 'expect nothing less than a win' - where did my 'anger' option go? Sometimes I do want to go ballastic at the team at half time, especially with the lazy players, but I'm not always afforded that. Maybe that's just the kind of manager I am, I go mad and scream and shout, and if I want to do that, then I'll take the repercussions as they come, be it the team hating me or rubbish performances. But I don't want the game making that decision for me.

You can say the same things as your assistant. Maybe not as a team but you can do it by clicking on each player individually.

IMO the team talks are the thing that needs the most work done on for FM10.

I completely agree with you!

I hope SI will implement these points in their future versions.

good post. agree with what you said. Hopefully these areas will get stronger as the years go on. i also like the club policy thing.

i agree, the game needs a revamp maybe new producer (the guy whos incharge basically) or summin (dont no game studio language) mite do it

needs a breath of fresh air

One of the more constructive posts Kan and you make your points well.

Nicely put and i love the club policies idea

One of the more constructive posts Kan and you make your points well.

Nice one, cheers pal

Give this man a job, Someone with sense, Excellent points that would make the game alot lot better.

Well Done