I Nearly Killed Sammy Lee!

First of all I must explain the title before I leave the whole world in wonder but also before I get a knock at my door from the police who wish to charge me for attempted murder. Sammy Lee as you will all know is Liverpool assistant manager and legend. I wouldn’t wish harm on the guy, I think he is a fantastic assistant for Liverpool and long should he reign. But recently at a Liverpool reserve game I spotted him in a line of traffic going into the ground as I ate  my chips before nipping into Prenton Park. Being a bit struck by his awe I had to catch his attention for a wave, shouting SAMMY towards the car, Mr Lee and his driver both looked into my direction startled. The guy is getting on now and to be honest does look like he may suffer from high blood pressure, such a shock on his face made me fear as I thought maybe I could have possibly killed him with fright.

But now if your still here after that long winded explanation of a title I will go on to tell you why I make it. Football Manager has begun to reflect how important not just an assistant manager is but the whole backroom team. The best managers in the world all have something in common and that is that they have the best assistants working with them. Sir Alex Ferguson has had a string of them, over the years watching how they have developed a team with them, most notably Carlos Queiroz who helped influence one of the greatest United teams of all time influencing the 4321 system and bringing with him a certain Cristiano. But Cloughie & Taylor, Jose & Clarke and many more pairings are key to the success of the biggest teams.

The game is moving towards this each year we are seeing the role of our staff grow increasingly, only last year though did we see the real importance a good assistant manager could be, giving us many more options to help us do a better job. Tactics feedback, training reports, coaching reports and news of what loan deals are available in a certain position. For a time backroom staff in the game were merely but names in the game, put there to look good and marvel when your able to tempt a former legend to your club, I have enjoyed the pleasure of working with, Toldo as a goalkeeping coach, Beckham taking care of set-pieces and oddly enough Michael Owen training up the defenders. But they had very little influence on the team. Football Manager has made in roads to the development of training and how the coaches can influence the effectiveness of training, but more work needs to be done so that the selection of coaches can have a bigger overall affect on the squad.

One way in which this may happen is that coaches could bring with them their own training schedules, I would be surprised if the staff themselves didn’t have a big hand in building what the players do on a regular basis. depending on their expertise the coach could come with a favoured package of different activities to get the best out of them in a particular area. You could choose to tinker with it as a sort of discussion or let him go wild, this would then be good to be able to assign certain players to work with certain coaches. Maybe it is a little gimicky, but wouldn’t it be good to have an option to send your team to an army training camp at the start of the season to get them fit again, just like Roy Keane? Another thing that may be helpful extra one-on-one coaching, David N’Gog could work more with Ian Rush in order to develop certain parts of his game, maybe it is in his personality to spend extra time on the training field everyday, this could quicken up his develop and help reach a bigger potential. The introduction of coaching badges to the achievements screen showing the ability of each of the coaches and players in some cases, on this judging how much the coach can actually do, what limit they can coach or manage at. Although one thing that we have to be careful of doing when introducing such aid for the manager is not to distract from the game itself and instead enhance an already great experience. The managers ability should always be at the forefront of any decision, so building these at tools for the manager and not replacements is of highest importance.

Yesterday Liam published an interesting article discussing the ease of the transfer market in FM, more to the point the ability to find players is far to easy if you know the right numbers to pop in, again the ability of the backroom staff and your own ability to look at a player and know if he can fit in should be the main aim of the game. I have to agree that being able to search the players that would best match your need in FM is so not as enjoyable and in fact no more then picking a fantasy football team online. An improvement in scouting could be a better way to guide and manipulate the scout to produce better reports as JP suggested. But not only that, the experience of a scout should count and even the coach for that matter. You pick up a member of staff from Manchester United, they should be able to come straight to you suggesting players that they have had the pleasure of working with. A final suggestion to make the scouting system a little better, but your own experience and contacts should matter, being able to call in favors with staff you have had interaction with in the game to suggesting players and grab a loan deal here or there, I think something like  that could work well around the LLM fans. Without Roy Keane’s Manchester United connections I doubt that he would have made half the signings that he did, but while at Sunderland, maybe that would have been a good thing.

So there is still alot to do before Football Manager can reflect the importance of a top team behind the scenes as well as on the pitch and I am sure as they always do they will make good progress in doing this as games go on maybe at some point down the line we could actually see coaches raise in experience, knowledge and intellegence the same way that we watch a wonderkid reach their potential and with the longer the coach has been in the game the better he may become. Could there be a time that I feel as attached to my Number. 2 as I do for my Number 9? But first things first, can Football Manager find a serious use for the physio?