So, the Football Manager series scares
me. There are menus and charts and
significant obfuscation of its systems.
It’s big and clever, for the statistician
and connoisseur whose dish is data.
Sports Interactive’s commitment to
quality is a feast for those with the
acumen to get to the
bottom of the bowl.
Yet the tutorial
system that made last
year’s game more
beginner-friendly
returns, fooling you
into thinking you know
what’s going on. You
start with the club
philosophy, and this establishes the
formation, instructions to the players,
and training sessions for your staff to
conduct. And, you’re up and running.
Other areas – transfers, scouting, staff
recruitment, and so on – are
introduced over a few in-game
weeks. You can do everything, or just
delegate and follow advice from your
backroom team. It’s tempting to think
you can do better, but you ignore
them at your peril. I look in on the
new Data Hub that provides
professional quality visualisations and
analyses. It’s not for the
dilettante. Ordering a
report from my
analytics team, they
replied: here is a
mysterious picture.
Contained within, your
failure. I was none the
wiser, so ignored it.
However, the game
unfolds at a snail’s pace. Five hours in
and I was still in the first week and I
got to my first match after 13 hours,
still unsure of how the team would
perform in the league. I began to
delegate huge swathes of admin and
yet, real-world days were passing meby. And I kept clicking continue. It is
compelling, like thirst is compelling.MATCH MAKER
Last year, the new match animations
were the moment that the veil was
removed between what you thought
was happening and what was actually
going on. This year there’s a whole
new match engine. Player animation
and the passage of play are all
improved, but it’s an incremental
development. You need to interpret it
like another graph. No one seems to
tackle anyone when you’re watching
and the highlights seem somewhat
random, making me question what
I’m missing. Nevertheless, it’s still
thrilling. When the net bulges, the
emotions are real.
The transfer market is
tremendous. The most basic option
gives you 20,000+ players and
deadline day is edge-of-the-seat stuff.
Getting good money for a player
running down his contract, and yet
lining up a replacement that I could
only afford once the wantaway
left-back had been sold, was like
three points away to the league-
leaders. The fans moaned on social
media, but haters gonna hate.W
hen Ardiles returnedto manageSpurs, he playedto
their strengths, putting all five world-class strikersin
fromthe start. It was breath-taking...and a disaster. I
find thatdevil-may-care, joie-de-vivre irresistible,
and that’swhy I suck at football manager sims. I’m a
fan, and the intricacies of the gameare often too arcane. Justplay
better, I scream, occasionallyout loud.
LIKEA BOSS
FOOTBALL MANAGER 2022ensures that heavy isthe head thatwears the crownByMattKilleenNo one seems
to tackle
anyonewhen
you’re
watchingTOP: I get that this is good.
RIGHT: (^) Top corner! Welost 6-3.
NEED TO KNOW
WHATIS IT?
The latest entry in the
football management
simulator series
EXPECT TO PAY
£40
DEVELOPER
Sports Interactive
PUBLISHER
Sega
REVIEWED ON
GTX 980 Ti, Intel
i5-4690K, 32GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
Yes
LINK
footballmanager.com
FootballManager 2022
REVIEW