Day 1 – The Beginning Of The End

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DAY 1 : My First look at the game and my thoughts on the new Meet The Staff feature!

As you will all know the Football Manager 2010 demo was recently released and not only is it far better than any other Football Manager demo I have ever played, it’s the fastest, sleekest and most breathtaking piece of programming I have witnessed in a long time. Yes, I have only played it for around an hour and an half but for once that is more than enough time to appreciate how good this game is and how epic it is going to become. Anyway, unless you have eminently avoided the title of the post you will have realised that this is the first of many analytical (Yeah, right) posts on my experiences with new demo, this blog will hopefully be updated every day up until I stop playing on the game. Without wasting any more of your time, let the adventure begin:

Steam was relatively easy to use, I heard about the release of the demo in the Fifa thread ironically, not realizing it was the 14th Of October. With the demo creeping up behind me, pinching me in neck and then running off waiting to be caught, I quickly booted up Steam and spunked in my pants at the FM page I’d waited to see for so long. After waiting around half an hour for the game to download, it was time to boot it up and be disappointing. The game crashed and skipped a couple of times, translated the words ‘ Football ‘Manager’ (presumably) into an array of obscure languages and eventually loaded up the main menu.

My first game was decided naturally, I was of course going to go as Middlesbrough. It didn’t take me long to key in my details and with in a matter of seconds I had my profile complete and team selected. At this point, wow, just wow. The home page was just spectacular, I had random boxes of information plotted about that told me what news I had unread, what injuries the team had and who my first game was going to be against. The layout looked fantastic, the smoothness of the whole thing was completely unexpected. Any initial worries that the skin was a bit too bright were immediately nullified as I selected the dark skin and continued to be amazed. Like a lot of people, it took me a few minutes before I managed to press continue; I spent at least a minute struggling to locate the god damn thing granted but the rest of my time was spent gazing at the lovely arrangement of everything.

I eventually found the Continue button and distracted my self long enough to be able to press it and get on with the game. Steve Gibson greeted me with the usual message, Agnew explained the clubs current transfer obligations to me and then suggested that I take time out to meet the clubs staff, WHAT…!?

Meet The Staff

When I first seen this message I was expecting to have to speak to each member of my backroom staff in a press conference type interface. Fortunately I was wrong. Each member of the team had an important piece of information to share with me and the occasional piece of transfer advice, I have to say that this is considerably better that the assistant report at the start of FM 09. As well as the transfer advice, I was told which formation suited the team the most and was given the option to import the said tactic there and then. Mr Cooper also told me who the best youth prospect was and that I should concentrate on youth to maximize the clubs excellent academy system.

As for the important information I mentioned earlier, it really is quite useful, that’s if it is going to be used correctly. Every single attribute of the team was broken down and compared to other teams in the league. I now knew how fast my team were, how aggressive they could be and how tall they all are. Most importantly however, the staff also told me who the worst and best was in each attribute field. I knew Newcastle were the most aggressive and fastest team in the league and that Coventry were the slowest and Swansea the shortest. I knew that if I took note of these factor, I could have a huge advantage going into my first couple of games.

For the first time in Football Manager, I created a ‘note’. This note would entail everything I had found out from my meeting with the staff. I was planning on referring to this ‘note’ before every match so that I could edit my tactics to suit the team I was playing. My first game was against Sheff Utd and annoyingly I had nothing on paper over them, however there style was a bit obvious, they liked to utilize the target man and pack the midfield with lots of pressure on the ball. We drew this game 1-1, just like real life! we matched them in aerially but still got bullied on the deck despite my aggressive approach.

We were visiting the Liberty Stadum in Wales next and I knew I had something on them. I quickly referred to my ‘note’ and seen that they were the shortest team in the league. We were no Stoke but we had some big players who could head the ball. Due to injuries I had to play four center halves at the back which played right into my favour. I made sure they all went up for our corners and attacked the ball. I also decided to use my loanee target man Joe Garner upfront with the goal poaching Lita, I was expecting Garner to win everything in the air and Lita to be there to get hold of the knockdowns. I had the perfect plan and setup for this game, surely it couldn’t go wrong?…It never, I won 3-1, scored twice from a corner and finished it off with Garner smashing the ball off the bar with his head and letting Lita tap in the equalizer. The two center halves powered two headers into the roof of the net and my target man dominated aerially all game, we leaked a cheap goal but my plan worked and I had successfully utilized information given to me from a member of my staff team!

This little feature is a brilliant edition to the game and if used correctly can be the key to ensuring the best tactical setup at all times. If I had never been given the information from my staff, I would of approached the game very differently and lessened my chances of walking away with the three points. I now value the opinions of my staff team a lot more, in past Football Manager games they have done nothing but annoy me, now I see them as an important part of my club.