Football Manager 2010‘s greatest achievement is it enables series veterans to easily manage the information overload typical of the series; its biggest flaw is it doesn’t do enough for the novice.
The manager is constantly overwhelmed with stats and options in this series. Selecting the first team and substitutes from a squad of 40-plus players for the first time is traditionally a time-consuming affair since picking the best player for a single position is a complicated task. There are 36 major player attributes to take into consideration, each with ratings between 1 and 20, and player roles may require at least competence in several interrelated attributes.
The new manager might be flummoxed gauging something as simple as a player’s speed. Where to start? There is the Pace attribute, of course. Ah, but it’s not that simple because the Acceleration stat must also be taken into account. Then there’s Stamina which will determine how he’ll last over the course of 90 minutes. Oh wait, there’s also Agility and Balance, and we can’t forget his Natural Fitness.
Let’s not even go into the fact there are hidden attributes that affect player behaviour and ability.
Manual
The confusion and uncertainty is exacerbated by Sports Interactive’s cavalier approach to documentation. It would be too much to expect the kind of impressive tomes that shipped with classic Microprose and Dynamix games given that reading comprehension in this “tl;dr” age is perilously stunted. That said, Sports Interactive manuals are best described as pamphlets with delusions of adequacy. They were usually so weak they had to be supplemented with an additional guide typically released with the mid-season patch.
The game is more complex than ever yet Sports Interactive’s documentation still falls short.
In an extraordinarily stupid move, Sport Interactive did not bundle a PDF manual with the Steam version of the game. To get started with this deep simulation, the aspiring manager will have to refer to in-game help and an online manual, frequently switching between the two since, annoyingly, neither is complete. Even more annoyingly, the guides are sometimes flat out wrong.
The online manual claims the Team Instructions section of the Tactics screen has a slider for Mentality which ranges from Ultra Defensive to All Out Attacking. This is patently false. There is no slider labeled Mentality in Team Instructions. Player Instructions has such a slider but that only ranges from Defensive to Attack. Instead of a slider labeled Mentality, Team Instructions has two separate drop-down menus: Philosophy and Starting Strategy. The Philosophy menu has options ranging from Very Rigid to Very Fluid while the Starting Strategy menu provides tactical options from Contain to Overload. While these differences could be explained by changes made to the Tactics screen after the online manual was written, this raises the question of why the manual wasn’t updated accordingly.
There are more questions that go unanswered. Why are there two separate options for counterattacks in Team Instructions? (There is one option in Specific Instructions and one in Starting Strategy. Selecting the Starting Strategy option automatically selects the option in Specific Instructions but the reverse does not hold true.) Why does designating a Target Man in Player Instructions not automatically select that player as a Target Man in Team Instructions? Why doesn’t the online manual note the Touchline Instruction “Take More Risks” is only selectable when the “Overload” strategy is used? Isn’t it superfluous? If the team is going on an all-out attack, isn’t it safe to assume the players are going to take more risks?
If the online manual and in-game help fall a little short in explaining the basics to rookie managers, both are woeful when it comes to advanced topics. To delve deeper into the game, the new manager will have to refer to a user wiki.
For all the shortcomings of the documentation, the game is easier to play than ever for series veterans.
Assistance, bitte
Clough had his Taylor. Eriksson had his Grip. In FM2010, you have your assistant manager. His job is to simplify yours, and he does this brilliantly.
The concise reports your right hand man provides for each player are indispensable when appraising ability as they will be easier to comprehend than a giant wall of stats. For example, a Coca-Cola League 2 player with the attributes seen in the screenshot above would be pithily described as a fairly skillful player who’s ineffectual in the air.
The assistant’s ability to parse interrelated stats will be especially helpful during matches. He will point out which players aren’t doing well, which areas you need to improve upon and which opposing players need to be shut down. These real-time summaries of individual and team performances are invaluable when adapting tactics to suit on-field developments
The assistant manager’s role can be further expanded if you so choose. He can be called upon to select the team, suggest a formation, manage the reserves, attend press conferences on your behalf, negotiate contracts, arrange and take charge of friendlies, and even conduct team talks.
Despite the assistant manager’s all-pervasive presence, it will still ultimately all come down to you, the manager. It bears reminding Sir Alex Ferguson has had numerous assistants who’ve made important contributions to his winning campaigns yet they’ve not accomplished much when they’ve struck out on their own. Your assistant manager is free to dispense advice and offer suggestions but it will ultimately you who makes the hard decisions.
Win and it is you who will earn the plaudits; lose and yours will be the first head that rolls.
