Football Manager 2016

The year is 2049. My avatar, managing Tottenham Hotspur, is 67. Harry Redknapp is long dead. Chris Smalling is my assistant manager. Now, as I finally wind down my Football Manager 2012 playthrough through an unholy combination of bugs and, well, having won everything, the future beckons. I’m having an existential crisis and the line between real and fictional is melting. But let’s start at…

“When you’re working on annual iterative titles, it is difficult,” says Miles Jacobson, Studio Director at Sports Interactive. “You’re always going to get people turning around saying ‘you haven’t added anything.’ And no matter how much you add, you’re still going to get people saying that.” That’s the challenge that the Football Manager series faces every year. It remains, as it always will be, a…

Just before the launch of Football Manager 2017 [official site], with the beta already released to the many people who preordered the game, I spoke to Sports Interactive director Miles Jacobson about the changes his team have made in this latest game in the series. We talked about AI improvements, Brexit, and whether Leicester winning the Premier League was a happy day or a sad…

Football Manager 2017 [official site] is out tomorrow but I've been playing the beta for a couple of weeks now, striving to climb from the lower leagues to the dizzy heights, and seeing if I can do a better job with post-Ferguson Manchester United than Jose Mourinho. Neither of us know quite what to do with Paul Pogba, I have concluded. Along the way to…

Football Manager [official site] is not a political game. I recall being extremely surprised when the 2022 World Cup was relocated to Argentina from Qatar in my first playthrough of last year's edition. Given reports about the bidding process and the feasibility of hosting the tournament there, as well as more troubling stories, I wondered what the reasons for the move were in the fictional…

I'm always a little bit upset that I can't play the new version of Football Manager [official site] as soon as the season starts, though I understand the reasons why (namely, the fact that the bloody transfer window doesn't stop when the football starts). Usually I console myself by reading about the new features that I can expect once the game arrives. This year, the…

Even though Sega have been publishing PC strategy and simulation games for years now, I still can't see the company logo or hear the word without thinking back to hours spent at schoolfriends' houses, trying to work out if Sonic was too fast or I was too slow. The acquisition of Amplitude was the point that I decided that I needed to ask Sega a…

Football Manager 2017 (and the kind of streamlined/quick play version called Football Manager Touch 17) [official site] will be coming to PC on 4 Nov 2016. I suppose now is as good a time as any to bring up my grievance with the FM series which is the fact that you're not actually managing a football at all; you're managing a team of players who…

I've won titles and cups, and I've been sacked following a relegation that was more surrender than battle. I've found young stars at bargain prices, and built a team of overpaid ego-machines who are ready to down tools as soon as the going gets tough. After tasting success and failure, I'm ready to tell you wot I think about Football Manager 2016 [official site].

The year is 2035. I am the manager of Leeds United. The year is 2035 + 10 days. I am no longer the manager of Leeds United. I got sacked.

The year is 2035. I am the manager of Leeds United. I have Football Manager 2016, but I've been struggling to find an entry point. Starting a new FM career is a little like starting a novel you know is going to take you a year to read. I started careers at Manchester United, sighed, and closed the game down; I already knew too much…

You've watched other kids play it, but never had the courage to try for yourself. You overhear friends talking about it, but when you ask, they brush you away with a dismissive, "Oh, you wouldn't like it." You fear they may be right, but you need to find out for sure. You've called in sick, you've taken the phone off the hook, you've drawn the…

Football Manager 2016 [official site] is out this Friday, but before we publish our review, Adam and Graham decided to gather in the RPS dugout to discuss this year's tactics, transfers and press room meltdowns. Graham: I think I'd be pretty disappointed if I spent £35/$50 on Football Manager 2016.

That feeling when you finish a long series of books, or a television series, and say goodbye to the characters for the last time. Closing a world, pulling down the shutters and knowing that it has run its course, is a peculiar sensation. Indeed, it can provoke a sense of loss. How utterly ridiculous I felt last week when I mourned the ending of tens…

Did you know that you can have children in Football Manager [official site]? Spend enough time in the managerial game and a player appears in the youth ranks of your club, a 'regen' who shares your family name. It's your son, that, and he might go on to be a star. In previous installments, Junior was made up of a random assortment of stats, as…

As soon as club football starts again after the summer drought, my mind turns to the next iteration of Football Manager [official site]. In an ideal world, it'd be released to coincide with the first kick of the season (for me, Bury away at Doncaster on August 8th) but with the late closure of the transfer window and (maybe) the need to check that Memphis…

Football Manager 2016 might be just around the corner, but if you're anything like me, you're probably following the new football season and wishing it was here already. Thankfully, Football Manager 2015 [official site] ships with a database editor that has let the community update the game with all the summer transfers. There are two ways to update your game so that Raheem Sterling is…