Football Manager is fun, but if you do not know what you are doing, it is like being asked to carry out a complicated task at work and having no clue where to start.
At its core, Football Manager is basically an exercise in spreadsheet management. But somehow, crunching numbers and knowing which buttons to click is really enjoyable.
For veteran players, this advice may not be news to you, but these tips are aimed at newer players who want to get better at Football Manager and are not quite sure where to start.
General training
Across a season, there are more than 400 training sessions to account for in FM24. The more of those sessions you customise yourself, the better your team will be.
In busier weeks, your team may only train three times a week but, for the most part, they will have around 10 training sessions a week for more than 40 weeks, dating from the start of pre-season through to May.
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If my next opponents are considered to be a strong side, defending is usually the focus throughout the week, but if I expect to win, I try to make sure the players carry out as many attacking exercises as possible, as you can see in the example below. Before a fixture against Tottenham Hotspur, the squad’s focus is preventing goals, but against Everton, the remit is scoring as many as possible.
The trick is to copy and paste a week’s worth of training and apply it to other weeks to save time. It will take far too long to individually select more than 400 training sessions.
Instead of spending hours on what can be an extremely boring task, create a week’s worth of attacking training and a week’s worth of defensive training, copy and paste that schedule according to your fixture list, and make minor changes to each week’s training plan as necessary.
For example, before a cup fixture, you may want to add penalties to your schedule. If your team keeps giving the ball away too cheaply, you may want to swap in a ball retention session, and so on. The above example is just a rough template you can use as a starting point.
Another thing to note is that I try to get my team to practise set pieces at least once a week, regardless of whether the focus is on defending or attacking, which I’ve found pays dividends.
GO DEEPER
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Individual training
At the start of every season, you should go through your entire squad and give each player a specific role to work on in training to improve their familiarity with your tactics.
For example, if you want your right-winger to be used as an inside forward, they should be working on that role in training every week.
It is common for players to be more fluent in one role than another. A player may have a different favoured role to the one you want to use. If they are working on the role you want them to fulfil in training and playing in that position during matches, they will perform better over the season.
After deciding their position, it is also worth giving each player an additional focus to help improve weak spots in their game.
In this instance, Jarrod Bowen’s strength (8 out of 20) is an area you might want to improve, so that should be his additional focus.
Your staff will provide reports throughout the season about which players are responding well and which ones are not. If a player is showing no improvement in the area you wish to see, change that player’s additional focus.
A tried and tested formation
I have been playing Football Manager every single year for well over a decade. During that time, I have probably used the 4-3-3 formation more than any other.
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It is a proven tactic that works regardless of how good your team may be. If you are managing a strong side, change your mentality to positive or attacking, but if your team is not expected to win many games, then a cautious or balanced approach is often best. To read more on the best formations to use in FM24, follow the link below.
In-game management
I try not to let 15 minutes pass in a match without shouting an instruction at my team.
There is no concrete data on which shouts work best, but there are a few I rely on a lot more than others.
If my team has scored a goal, I will often praise them. This is particularly useful when you are playing a significantly weaker team and you expect to score a lot. It will not always work, but it has proven useful over the years.
When you are trailing and want to chase a goal, I have found that the ‘demand more’ and ‘berate’ options are most effective. Again, there is no guarantee either will work, but they do have their uses.
Outside of shouting at your players (and hoping they will listen), it is also worth switching your team’s mentality. Here’s a breakdown of when to shift mentalities during a match and the reasons for doing so…
| Mentality | When to use | Reason |
|---|---|---|
Very defensive | After 75 minutes | To defend a lead |
Attacking | As soon as you concede | To score a goal |
Cautious | As soon as you score a goal | When the other team is better |
Very attacking | After 60 minutes | To score a goal |
Transfer tips
If things are not working on the pitch for you, it might be time to buy new players. Before submitting a transfer offer, there are two things you can do to make your budget go further.
Let’s say you are managing Manchester City and want to sign Aurelien Tchouameni from Real Madrid. City’s budget in the game is only £35.8million ($44m), but Tchouameni will cost a lot more than that. So how can you make a deal work?
The first thing to do is offer a majority of the transfer fee as an instalment payment to be made at a later point. To do this, click additional fees, and then select instalments > instalments (12 months) > 3 instalments.
Another useful clause is to pay part of the transfer fee after the player has played 50 league games. This will not happen for at least one and a half seasons, so it helps delay payments in a manageable way. Once you arrive at a fee you are happy with, there is one more step to carry out.
Under the additional clauses section, select ‘percentage of profit from next sale’, and then click the minus button on the right and select remove and exclude from negotiation. Then do the same with ‘percentage of next sale’. This will make sure the other team will not be able to include any future sell-on clauses.
Then submit the offer. Despite the overall transfer fee being £68million, only £25m will be immediately deducted from your transfer budget.
Repeat these steps for the majority of your transfers to make your transfer budget go further. The money you pay in instalments will impact what you are allowed to spend in future seasons — but if you can achieve success on the field, that will not matter too much.
GO DEEPER
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