If you’re new to football, new to Football Manager™, or just fancy a little bit of a refresher on some core game principles and information, this section should provide some assistance on how best to go about your managerial career. It also contains information about some of the more complicated leagues available to manage in as well as a glossary of terms that you’re likely to encounter as you play.
Beginner’s Guide
Welcome to Football Manager™ Console 2024! We’ve created a beginner’s guide to walk newcomers through getting to grips with the various aspects of management, and to hopefully answer any questions that might come up along the way.
Your first step is to create your managerial profile and begin a new Career. Follow the steps in the Quick Start guide to get stuck right in.
Football Manager™ is, as the name suggests, a football management simulation in which time advances upon selecting the ‘Continue’ button found in the top right corner of the screen. Although time exists as a fundamental concept, whenever the game returns from processing time forward, the ‘clock’ effectively stops for you to go about your business in as much (or as little) depth as required to action the items of the day. ‘Continue’ moves through your calendar incrementally; days become weeks, weeks become months, months become years, and so on.
Tutorials
Football Manager™ Console 2024 features a host of specifically tailored in-game tutorials designed to help you better understand some of your more common day-to-day managerial duties. Your Assistant Manager (or an appropriate member of the club hierarchy if an Assistant isn’t in place) will come to you at various junctures in your first few days and weeks on the job to guide you through the mechanics of things like scouting and making transfer offers, getting to know your players, playing your first match, navigating around the game, and more. They are fully immersive and will hopefully improve your level of comfort with everything you need in order to be a success and more importantly, enjoy playing the game.
Please note that these are only shown to you if you have selected ‘No’ from the ‘Knowledge Level’ section during the start of a new game. If you selected ‘Yes’, you can find them by selecting on the ‘?’ icon in the title bar.
Creating a Manager Profile
The next thing you’ll do upon starting Football Manager™ Console 2024 is create your managerial profile. The first section concerns your biographical details: Name, Surname, Nationality, Gender, Date of Birth. You can also edit your level of Football Manager™ and football knowledge if you wish to change them. Please note, depending on which service you use to access and play the game, there may be some filters on the names you’re able to choose.
Next, we come to customising your physical appearance. The ‘Head’ section allows you to create a custom 3D face model based on an uploaded photograph by selecting the mesh-outlined image from the ‘Facial Structure’ section. Select a photo – the higher the quality, the better the result – or you can use your webcam to take a picture, which you can then adjust in PhotoFit by aligning the dots with your own facial features. Hit ‘Generate Model’ to watch it take effect on your managerial avatar. Please note that this is only available on the PC version of the game
Alternatively, you can opt for the manual approach (which is the sole option on some mobile devices) and use the in-game settings to build your own facial features, or even use a completely randomised creation. You can also use the Body and Attire sections to make sure the finer details of your manager are perfected.
Once you’re done, that managerial profile is available to you every time you start a new game (if you create multiple profiles, you are given the option to select the one you wish to use, and you can also Save/Load Avatar from the new manager creation section).
Tactical Style
Next, you’ll be able to choose a tactical style for your newly chosen club, which instructs them how to play. Your assistant will make a recommendation based on the best fit for your current squad, which you can choose to follow or go with your own selection from the options available. You can change this as often as you like during your career, including in matches themselves if things aren’t going the way you’d like. Select ‘Confirm Style’ once happy with your selection.
Choose A Formation
After the Tactical Style has been chosen, you’ll be asked to choose a formation. Again, your assistant will make a recommendation based on the best fit with your Tactical Style also now taken into consideration. Select ‘Confirm Formation’ once you’re done.
Tactics
Your assistant will select a team based on the two selections you’ve made whilst also highlighting the importance of Player Roles within your Tactical Style and Formation and will highlight one player within your team so you can see their suitability across different Player Roles. You can then tweak the selections as much as you like before selecting ‘Proceed To Match’. If you have not selected a captain, a pop-up will appear, asking whether you’re happy with the player chosen. Selecting ‘Yes’ will proceed to the match, whilst selecting ‘No’ will let you choose your own captain and make any other last-minute changes you want.
Match
You’ll be thrust straight into a match against your club’s reserves or youth team in an intra-squad friendly! This serves as the perfect platform with which to get to grips with the game and see how your chosen Tactics fare. The backroom staff will monitor your players’ condition and body language throughout the match so you get a sense of how they’re performing, which will be displayed via an overall match rating out of 10. You will see highlights of the match and be prompted to change certain aspects of your setup and pay attention to different areas of the screen.
When the half-time whistle goes, you can start the second half by selecting the whistle icon in the very bottom right hand corner of the screen.
Once the match is over, your assistant will tell you that your formal introductions to the playing squad will happen afterwards. Select ‘Continue’ in the bottom right of the screen to proceed.
Team Report
Next, your assistant will take you through an overview of your first team squad, giving their opinion of what the strongest starting eleven is. When you’ve taken a good look at the screen, select ‘Next’.
Transfer
You’ll be given three suggestions of talented youngsters the board would like you to sign for your chosen club. You can skip this altogether by selecting ‘Skip’ in the top right of the screen or make an offer for one of them. If you choose to make an offer, your assistant will take you through the negotiation process. Once your offer has been accepted, you then move on to negotiating a contract with the player and their agent. You can let your assistant handle this by choosing the option in the top right of the screen or select ‘Next’ to do it yourself.
Your assistant will still help you if you choose to do it yourself, suggesting promises you may wish to give the player before negotiating terms. Select ‘Finalise Promises’ to see how the player and agent react – the agent’s reaction will be displayed in the top left pane of the screen. Select ‘Negotiate Contract’ to proceed to discussing terms, then ‘Suggest Terms’ when happy with them. The agent will react once more. Select ‘Finalise Deal’ to complete the transfer, then ‘Next’ in the top right to proceed.
Appointment Reaction
Your assistant will collate some reactions from the club, press, and social media to your appointment at your chosen club. Select ‘Next’ to proceed.
Club Introduction & Club History
Your assistant will collate some key information about the club, including predicted league finish, the Finances, Upcoming Season competitions, and Facilities. On the next screen, there will be an overview of the club’s Honours and League History from the last 20 seasons. Select ‘Next’ to proceed.
Principles
Principles is a major new addition in Football Manager™ Console 2024. These are a set of standards that you as a manager will ask that the players uphold on a day-to-day basis. They are ‘set’ every time you join a new club, and you have three of them at any one time from a range of 10. Your assistant can suggest the three for you to choose (in the bottom left corner of the screen) or you can choose them yourself. Once done, select ‘Select Principles’.
Inbox
For the last part of onboarding, the assistant will inform you that they and other members of your backroom staff will forward items for your attention to your Inbox, which acts as the central hub in Football Manager™ Console 2024 between matches, as well as showing you the different options on the left pane of the screen. Several of the areas are greyed out until they are encountered in the early part of your save and will appear in the following order: Recruitment, Training, Staff, Dynamics, and Development Centre (shortened to Dev. Centre on the left pane).
Report Record