Ali Dia Changed His Name to John Warrington and Started Managing

[laFirenzaLlama]

Posting this on general discussion because I'm brand new to the forum, literally created an account just to share this because I'm incredibly confused.

So this is on FM20, where I'm still enjoying a save as manager of Brentford. A bit of background info for the save; the year is 2026 and I have been managing Brentford since February 2020. After winning the Championship in my first full season, I managed to establish my team as a top 4 side and recently won my third consecutive Premier League. As well as these four league titles, I've also managed to win two FA Cups, two Carabao Cups and a Community Shield, so once this third Premier League title was confirmed I was added to the England Hall of Fame. So far so good.

Whilst enjoying my recent victory, I obviously wanted to have a little nose at the Hall of Fame to see how far I had yet to climb, points wise, which is how I came across the legendary manager himself... John Warrington.

Now, being a brand new addition to the Hall of Fame, my gaze was immediately drawn to the bottom of the table, where I noticed that this man had apparently been in charge of Liverpool. As a Liverpool fan myself, I was particularly surprised considering that;

a) Liverpool have never been managed by a "John Warrington"

b) The trophies he has been credited with are between 2019 and 2021

c) Jurgen Klopp has been Liverpool manager for the entire save

It was at this point that I happened to look up at the rest of the table and see that not only was this John Warrington the ninth most successful manager in English football history, but he was also the second! But if you thought the 10 trophies he won in his three year spell at Liverpool was impressive, just you wait to see what good ol' John had up his sleeve.

As you can see here, John not only managed to win a further five domestic trophies with Everton in the space of two seasons, he also would appear to have had two incredibly trophy-laden spells with non other than Warrington Town, his namesake club. He also seems to have found the time to manage both Warrington and Liverpool At THE SAME TIME, winning the Vanarama North and Northern Premier League at the same time as his two domestic quadruples with Liverpool in 2020 and 2021. And he's only got second in the Hall of Fame???

Move over Fergie, it's time for John "Wazza" Warrington to shine.

However the most impressive feat of his career, BY FAR, is undoubtedly winning six Premier League titles, five FA Cups and five Community Shields in six years between 2029/30 and 2034/35. Especially when you remember the start of this post, where I mention that the year is 2026. Twenty. Twenty. Six.

Yep, John Warrington is so dominant a manager that the FA and Premier League have just given up on holding any form of competition over the next nine seasons. Indeed, he's so PERFECT a manager that they've taken my own recent 2025/26 title win and credited it to an Everton side that he's not even managing and indeed are currently sitting in 6th place, a whole 31 points behind my Brentford team with five games to go.

A little peak at the Global Hall of Fame shows that as well as his domestic achievements, he also managed to win the 2027 Champion's League with Everton and will ultimately follow that by winning that very same competition four out of five years with Warrington between 2031 and 2035. Clearly, I've got my work cut out for me if I plan on establishing myself as one of the greatest managers in the world. Or who knows, maybe the FM Hall of Fame has fallen for the new Ali Dia?

On a more serious note, thanks for reading and if anyone knows how or why this has happened, please let me know, cause I'm really confused lol.

-----

A couple of notes;

- the save file hasn't been edited at any point

- the in-game editor is active but I'm not aware of anyway to edit the Hall of Fame using it (and as such haven't done so if there is a way)

- I have spent a good hour looking through these forums and Google for an explanation as to why this has happened, so if it has been brought up before and I'm just being ignorant then I apologise

- as I said, I'm brand new to posting on the forums, literally just created the account to post this and try and find an answer, so if I have posted on the wrong thread, I apologise again

- I am aware that the two different entries for John have different dates of birth, so they're obviously not the same person in-game

- apologies for any formatting or spelling issues, I am on a computer and English is my first language so it's definitely me being an idiot

 

[Freakiie]

I admittedly don't pay that much attention to the hall of fame, but I've never seen anything like this before. Fergie move over indeed, how can you compete with a manager that already has 6 future Premier League titles under his belt, with Warrington of all clubs!

Edited June 15, 2021 by Freakiie

[Grifty]

That is amazing, got to say, I would have love to have seen your confused reaction when you first looked at this!

[CFuller]

Have you - at ANY point during FM21 - downloaded and then loaded a save game that came from another user?

If it is, then the Hall of Fame data from that save file might have copied itself onto the data file that the game uses to record HoF data. On Windows, you can find this file at C:\Users\Public\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2021 > hall_of_fame.dat. You can delete this file to reset your HoF, though you will lose your manager's HoF records from your current save.

Personally, I think this is a pretty sloppy way to record HoF data. Those records should be tied to individual saves, and should not be easily transferred from user to user in this way.

Edited June 15, 2021 by CFuller

[duesouth]

17 hours ago, laFirenzaLlama said:

Or who knows, maybe the FM Hall of Fame has fallen for the new Ali Dia?

I was actually at the game where Ali Dia came on as a sub!  He actually almost scored right after he came on - Matt Le Tissier put a free kick into the box and Dia was about a yard wide with a flicked header.  Then he hardly touched the ball again and the sub got subbed off!

[afced7]

Ali Dia came on for Le Tissier in the first place.

[duesouth]

1 hour ago, afced7 said:

Ali Dia came on for Le Tissier in the first place.

You're right - but he did nearly score with that first touch after coming on - then nothing!

[bigmattb28]

21 hours ago, CFuller said:

Have you - at ANY point during FM21 - downloaded and then loaded a save game that came from another user?

If it is, then the Hall of Fame data from that save file might have copied itself onto the data file that the game uses to record HoF data. On Windows, you can find this file at C:\Users\Public\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2021 > hall_of_fame.dat. You can delete this file to reset your HoF, though you will lose your manager's HoF records from your current save.

Personally, I think this is a pretty sloppy way to record HoF data. Those records should be tied to individual saves, and should not be easily transferred from user to user in this way.

This. My HOF is terrible as it has all the random managers I have been on all the saves across the board, not to mention the manager from a couple of community saves I've done

I hate that the HOF collects all the data and has it all in one and no way to reset it it. It should jsut be the HOF per save file.

[donnghia]

On 15/06/2021 at 23:44, CFuller said:

Have you - at ANY point during FM21 - downloaded and then loaded a save game that came from another user?

If it is, then the Hall of Fame data from that save file might have copied itself onto the data file that the game uses to record HoF data. On Windows, you can find this file at C:\Users\Public\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2021 > hall_of_fame.dat. You can delete this file to reset your HoF, though you will lose your manager's HoF records from your current save.

Personally, I think this is a pretty sloppy way to record HoF data. Those records should be tied to individual saves, and should not be easily transferred from user to user in this way.

So it means that Warrington is JUST ANOTHER REAL-LIFE PLAYER like us?

[kentonizking]

I am John Warrington 

Edited June 17, 2021 by kentonizking

[kevhamster]

13 hours ago, donnghia said:

So it means that Warrington is JUST ANOTHER REAL-LIFE PLAYER like us?

Most likely.  If you've had a save imported from someone else or played online with other players, those managers would appear in your HOFs I believe.

[Hovis Dexter]

In, I think it was, FM20 I started a save when the new game was released and after a few months started a new save and reused the same manager's name. My manager had two entries in the Hall of Fame

[Jops14]

On 15/06/2021 at 17:44, CFuller said:

Have you - at ANY point during FM21 - downloaded and then loaded a save game that came from another user?

If it is, then the Hall of Fame data from that save file might have copied itself onto the data file that the game uses to record HoF data. On Windows, you can find this file at C:\Users\Public\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2021 > hall_of_fame.dat. You can delete this file to reset your HoF, though you will lose your manager's HoF records from your current save.

Personally, I think this is a pretty sloppy way to record HoF data. Those records should be tied to individual saves, and should not be easily transferred from user to user in this way.

Yeah I did the same downloaded the FM Retro save, and subsequently ruined FM21 with a bunch of ****** random persons titles.... Really irritating, even more so the only way to fix is to delete all of the HoF

[TRFC23]

Hi, I am actually John Warrington  Just stumbled across this! What on earth!? Did you download the 99/00 retro database at all?

 

I actually documented some of the save at FMBase as well

https://fm-base.co.uk/threads/the-warrington-way.161648/

Edited August 27, 2021 by TRFC23

[Federico]

Yeah this cheater plagued my save as well. Meh.