@font-face { font-family: "ＭＳ 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "ＭＳ 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; font-family: Cambria; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Improving football manager. Suggestions.
1 - It would be great to have an important addition to the game next year. I called it Team Philosophy: the general politics and playing style the team prefers in an extended period of time.
This is sort of like the plan your going to follow to grow a team in terms of signing players (looking into their skills but also their personalities), training (to focus on the areas that fit your philosophy better), and some new facilities you could built depending on the size of the team that can help you achieve those goals.
Looking at teams like Barcelona, Manchester City or Manchester United, you see different approaches to how they manage them selves. While Barcelona has develop over the years a great youngster system, giving them a lot of opportunities in the first team, Manchester City prefers to buy the best talents available, and Manchester United prefers to buy young talents around the world. But also the style of play is different. The patient of the board towards the manager is different, etc…
I believe it would add something really new just adjusting a few things that FM already has.
How will this affect the game?
a) Introducing a new advisor to the team on big clubs (on smaller clubs you would have to do this by your self but I’ll explain better in scouting) responsible to make sure that the players’ signed meet the criteria set in the philosophy screen. For example if you have a technical base team and you want to hire a good physical player that would struggle in your system, or if you find a talented kid that can disrupt a humble group of players easy to manage, etc…
b) Making petitions to the board: Deciding to build a football academy for the youngsters, not only improving a facility, so youngsters will come in at an earlier age (12 -14) an won’t be able to play competitive games that often but you could train them in specific aspects of the game on top or their natural talent. That way you can shape your team to be stronger in some aspects and that will affect the style of play in the future. Also, you can work on the mental aspect of the youngsters, teaching them to be very ambitious or humble, but you have to watch out cause they could get either cocky or lack competitive drive. And finally this could be a national academy, or like some European teams have, foreign academies. So if you decide to build it in Africa, you would get strong African youngsters, and if you build it in Brazil you would get fast players with lost of talent, or in Serbia you would get technical players mostly that later you could shape.
c) Scouting: There should be a difficulty level (optional) where scouts don’t reveal player attributes and to find out about a players real ability you would have to watch a player for a few games (or send your scout to follow him for a half season for example –only if you are at a big club). Since you don’t have a way of finding this players in the search screen, you would either wait for a scouting report on a specific region or if you are on a small team, you would have watch some TV games on previously recorded games of a certain league you like to follow. To meet team philosophy criteria, after you think you have the right players you want to sing, because of how they play, you should be able to talk to them to find out more about their personality or, and this bring my next point:
d) Press Reports: if you are interested on a player there should be a search engine that shows all of the news available from this player, and this will give you a better understanding of this player personality and will also help you when deciding if It will help the part of the philosophy that is Public Relations.
e) Training a playing style. In this years FM you can train for games (an for sure this will be improved) but imagine if you could train your team over a long period of time and aside from the tactics you use to be a certain type of team:
-General: You could train a team to have a more general blend making it easier to adjust to playing a defensive or an offensive style, but also making it more depended on players morale, individual talent or other external aspects.
- Control (Spain, Barcelona): Your team plays a slow tempo intelligent game. It’s very hard to take the ball away from the players because of there passing and dribbling skills, the look and wait for gaps to open. Players move together in and help each other. It could be almost impossible to counter if done with the right players. This style takes longer time, and it’s necessary to have the team play together for at least a couple of seasons to master so it takes patience.
- Direct/Fast Pace (Madrid, Manchester): Your team will move the ball fast. The Defenders and Midfield players will look to destroy the others’ team creative game and give the ball to the wingers or the forwards to counter attack. You need strong midfielders (and also a defender with creativity like Xavi Alonso) with high work rate and discipline team players, but also talented and fast wingers and strong strikers. This style could be lethal if perform correctly. It has more to do with players’ physical abilities than with team blend but is also more erratic and players tend to get frustrated and lose focus if the other team can control the ball.
- Defensive (Most Italian teams, old Germany Style) all of the players in your team pressure to get the ball. They’re organise, strong-minded players. They don’t lose focus easily and their mental abilities should be top notch. The play simple passes and don’t move a lot witch helps them stay in defensive position. They are less affected by playing abroad and tend to be very consistent. You need accurate passers and wingers with less focus on speed and need tall strikers and defenders to win lost of headers.
- Fighters are aggressive teams that fight for every ball (lots of English teams). It works best with home grown players that play with lots of motivation and determination. They are not very high on technique and play better with rain and snow. Tend to get a lot of cards and are better when playing at home.
For sure the guys at FM2012 could find out more ways to work around this subject. As I said before, many of the things I explained here are in someway or another already in the game so making them a bigger part is just a small step away (I hope).
Other things I would love to have are:
2- Difficulty levels:
Easy: You can see all of the attributes, even the hidden ones, and you don’t have to scout the players to get the info. You start the game as a world known manager with a great reputation and you could pick any team in the game.
Medium: You can pick any team but, to make it more realistic you should be able to pick your reputation between: Former youth manager from the club your picking (like Del Bosque who was unknown before taking over Real Madrid but have been managing B team), or former B team manager, only when you pick Big Teams; and, just out of the academy with no professional football experience when you pick lower category teams.
This way your reputation plays a big part on how you can handle the game at the beginning. It happens now in Football Manager, but is not that hard; it should be a big factor if you are training a big club with lots of older guys with a lot of power in the Club (What happened to Brian Clough in Leeds, or to Del Bosque in Real Madrid after winning to champions league).
The rest is more or less like it is now, because FM2011 is not that hard of a game.
Hard: You have to start at the bottom of the countries league. Scouts don’t reveal the attributes of players, they only tell you their strengths and weaknesses, and to know this player better you would have to watch some games for yourself, and then get a chance to talk to player if you want to find out more about his philosophy. Also you would send the scout to dig deeper if your really interested (for example you can get info like his grades in school to know if his bright, or get reports of others sports the kid has played.
This will also help you in designing the type of team you want or the type of manager you are,
Teams and presidents in this level should also be a big factor. Before picking a team you should be offer more that just money for transfer and prestige. Like if the president wants to spend money (not to much) but wants results right away, or if the club has a history of selling players but doesn’t have the ambition to grow, etc… You could try to change that personality, but it will be harder in some clubs just like in real life, so picking the right club will always play a part.
In this level it will be a lot harder to stay at a big club, because keeping the motivation up should be harder so you’ll have to move players around a lot more. It should be harder in the Italian and Spanish league as it is in real life, or for big spending clubs with low patient.
With those handicaps it should be hard enough that if you start in a team and don’t dig deep into your managerial work, you could be frustrated by your third season and either start another game or try an easier one, but good enough that if you put in time to research in the game you could feel that your actually achieving something big.
3- Manager Attributes
I know this is kind of lame, but you shouldn’t have a definition of your profile saying you are prone to bring in national players, first, because even if you are it has more to do with the club your in then with your personality. If your training Manchester United or Real Madrid, It will be kind of hard to bring only English or Spanish players (and this is the only way to bring that up from 50%), also It would be unrealistic to modern football where big teams gain advantage over smaller teams by having the ability to find talent all over the world.
It would be better if you were defined by how you like to shape the team. If you like veteran players renown players, if you prefers youngsters that you could shape, or if you like a bit of both, or If your more of a “Cantera” manager like Guardiola, how prefers to bring players from the clubs youngster system.
4- Vacations
Don’t call it “vacations” because you don’t actually go on vacation, you just want to move faster trough time in other to see development happened a bit faster. But you should have more control over want happens while you are gone. For example:
1) Tell your assistant to put players in the game depending on their status in the team. If you have a Key Player, he would play all the important games if his stamina/condition were over 90. If his an important first team player, he’ll play most of the games, but will be reserve if the game is not that important and you have told your assistant to rotate more. If you have a young promise, they will get playing time in games when you’re a favourite to win by a big margin or after a game is resolve. Etc…
2) Also, stop the game if one of your trainers is offered a job at another team so you could have time to offer him a contract, or put the option to offer new contract automatically to those players/or trainers that are considered to valuable to lose, and established the increase percentage your whiling to offer in case that happens.
3) Make a youngster go on a training schedule you predesign for him once hi turns pro, cause a lot of time you come back from vacation to see your youngster turn 17 and stay at the general training schedule for a long time.
4) Warn your manager to come back from simulation if your team enters a 3 game losing streak or if a big problem occurs that need to be fixed right away.
I hope someone reads this big essay cause it’s taken a lot of time to think and write, and I hope the guys that develop FM can find cool and applicable stuff to the game from here. I’ve become the greatest manager of all time in the past few years in FM, so this has been made after countless hours of FM play. Enjoy.