Profile
As a manager, you have a profile in the same way as all players and staff have a profile. Your managerial attributes are displayed on the ‘Manager Profile’ section from the Home screen. The ‘Manager Profile’ section also details your personal biographical information.
Your profile is directly impacted by the decisions you make as manager, while it also features eight attributes, in addition to the coaching attributes found on every non-player. Those attributes are as follows:
Reputation
A nice and simple one; the higher the rating, the more you’re known in the footballing world. A higher reputation can and will have a huge effect on your career; attracting interest in your services from bigger teams, attracting better players to your club, players already at the club will be more inclined to work harder and more professionally for a manager of greater repute, and many, many more situations you’ll encounter as you progress.
Media Handling
This attribute is representative of your dealings with the media; how you interact with journalists, how often you attend press conferences, and whether or not you keep your players happy with your responses to public questions. Attending press conferences will certainly boost the attribute, while delegating them to a member of your backroom staff or storming out of them altogether will see it quickly drop.
Tactical Consistency
If you’re the sort of manager who plays with one tactic no matter what, you’ll have a high Tactical Consistency rating. If you change between tactics on a regular basis, that number will drop. Changes are mostly determined by whether the team’s formation is different from one tactic to the next, rather than subtler changes within a formation that remains the same over a number of matches.
Hands On Approach
This number is mostly reflective of three key areas of the club and whether you retain control over yourself or delegate them out to your backroom staff. It focuses on team talks, scouting and training; assuming control of these, and maintaining an active role – particularly with regards to the number of scouting reports requested and the frequency of changes made to the training schedule – will see your Hands On Approach rating improve considerably.
Managing Finances
This is mostly reflective of the club’s financial state and the relative health of the wage budget under your stewardship of the club. If both of those are trending upwards, so will the attribute; any concerns in these areas will reduce it accordingly.
Handling Team Discipline
This number is plainly reflective of the number of unhappy players at the club at any given time. A tally of unhappy players will result in a lower number, while keeping a squad full of players with no cause for complaint will see the number increase. The attribute remains static for the first ninety days of your tenure at any club to ensure that any situations you inherit are not judged against you.
Loyalty to Players
This number is governed primarily by the average length of time each of your players have spent at the club under your management. If the average tenure of a player exceeds four seasons, the number increases, but if you tend to move players on within two seasons, the number decreases.
Domestic Player Bias
This number reflects the balance of domestic players in your squad against the total number of foreign players. The number is considerably higher if the squad is mainly comprised of domestic players.
My History
The ‘My History’ section keeps a record of your key information and achievements throughout your career while also covering your managerial movements and activity in both conversations and in press conferences, as outlined below:
Questions from the Media
From time to time, you will find yourself fielding an individual question straight into your Inbox, as the media seek your thoughts on a range of matters. Your response will often elicit a reaction, be it from your own players, the opposition, another manager, or the journalist themselves.
Visions and Objectives
At the very heart of every job you’ll have over the course of your career are the visions and objectives outlined by your employers. Most teams will have a long-term vision they want to realise; it could be as simple as winning a particular competition, or it could be as grandiose as wanting to achieve several promotions to reach the top flight by a particular date. Clubs can operate with five-year plans at most, with the overall vision underpinned by several seasonal objectives.
It will be your job, as manager, to ensure the club remains on course to make the vision a reality by ensuring a steady progression towards those objectives happens as a bare minimum requirement. You will be judged on all facets of the blueprint; if the board think you’re not making sufficient progress, for example, they might change the short-term objectives to be more challenging in order to make up for lost time, or in extreme cases they might well decide to cut ties with you altogether in favour of someone new who can take them to where they want to be.
You will get to have a say on the vision and the individual objectives through the course of contract negotiations. The longer you stay at a club and the better you do, the more likely you are to have your voice heard, but there will be scope early on in your time at a club for a bit of give and take. Some clubs will appreciate a more optimistic outlook – certainly, during the interview stage, it might be worth your while setting the bar high if you want to see off your competition for the job – while others will adopt a more patient approach and find the best fit rather than the boldest candidate.
The road ahead will be clearly mapped out for you in any case. You will, like never before in Football Manager™, have the tools at your disposal to not just know where you’re going, but how you’re going to get there, and the opportunity to leave your own mark on proceedings too.