The first impression you get while playing Football Manager 2012 is how it’s improved as an imitation of the real thing – a genuine simulation of what it means to be a football manager, inasmuch as you can simulate the experience digitally.

Granted, there are no fans screaming pedophile chants at you, the BBC isn’t running documentaries about your son and no one stopping you from managing Barcelona as your first job.

But when it comes to football, and specifically, the myriad of opportunities available to a person wanting the experience of managing a football club, Football Manager is miles ahead of what you can expect.

Miles has been talking about the new features for the last month or so, but instead of features I’ll be talking about what broad changes you can expect in your playing experience.

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

Your assistants are now better at ‘assisting’ you. During training they will make recommendations on which areas a certain player needs a special focus in, or evaluate a player’s previous training levels and make recommendations accordingly. Leading up to a match you will get feedback on your match preparation and whether you need to change focus based on the next opposition’s strengths and weaknesses. You can also create ‘Shouts’ – a set of touchline instructions that players can automatically apply, as they would in the real world based on their training. In other words you can ask your team to tighten up and defend better instead of asking them to do 5 different individual things. You know, as you would in real life.

The 2012 edition of Football Manager makes you realise more than any previous edition the sheer amount of work that goes into running a football club (thankfully SI stick to the footballing aspects of the game), and that you can be as involved as Arsene Wenger, running the rule over every player’s training and customising it, or delegating to a strong team of coaches and trusting your team like Alex Ferguson.

Realism

Player / Coach negotiations are now more realistic, thanks to the subtleties of personality, tone of voice and the ability to lock certain aspects of your contract offers (for example if you have a wage ceiling but can afford higher bonuses).

There’s a bit of randomness in there – in one installation Berbatov’s agent happily accepted a reduced contract extension, in the other he wanted a pay raise – but overall you’re at a more realistic set of interactions between yourself and the football world – press, players, coaches and fellow managers.

And it would be remiss to talk about realism without mentioning the improved match engine – The 3D match engine looks more natural, and like I said about the last edition, Football Manager is that rare game where your football team is simulated the same way you end up playing on FIFA yourself.

And slightly unrelated, but despite the quality of Berbatov as a player, you can’t play him and Rooney in the same team. Just like in real life, I had to drop Berba for Hernandez because he just didn’t move fast enough.

Still a bit surprised at Anderson’s low ‘shooting’ rating though.

Tactics

The tactical / player instructions system has been upgraded and so have the coach recommendations on player roles. It all feeds into the overall philosophy of having your staff assist you in picking the right team and the right role for each player within that team. Phil Jones hasn’t had the # of games in my playing time to show if he marauds up the pitch as effectively, but watching Vidic snapping into tackles, Carrick plan interceptions to perfection and Chicharito breaking clear of the last man to race onto a through ball and bear down on the opposition goal – it’s all a combination of knowing what tactics to use and the match engine translating them accurately.

Some will say that this makes the game too easy. I would argue that SI’s purpose is two-fold – to open up the game to as wide a demographic of players as possible, and to keep improving Football Manager to make it more realistic. In the real world you have coaches and scouts telling you what position player is best suited to, whether he’s a good future prospect and what his training should focus on. It’s not an ‘easy’ setting in real life, it’s how things are. The better your support staff are, the better the information they give you. At the end of the day it’s up to you (as it’s up to any manager) how they use the resources available to them – in terms of support staff, players, transfer kitty, wages budget and expectations from the board.

And you’ll find that if you cannot motivate your players, then it doesn’t matter how good they are, they won’t play to their potential. Sound familiar?

Play The Game

I could go on for hours – the squad strength screen, scouting options, enhanced player details, improved board negotiations, better training options – a lot of small upgrades and innovations, all of which are designed to make the game more realistic to play. The 2012 edition of Football Manager can feel slightly overwhelming with the information overload but that feeling quickly gives way to excitement over how much control you have, and how good the game has become to allow you to manage your football club your way.

Football Manager 2012 is out on Friday, 21 October. You can pre-order it through Steam, or enter the Soccerlens competition to win a free copy of FM12.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

To celebrate the release of the new Football Manager (2012), Soccerlens is giving away one (1) free copy of FM12 to our newsletter subscribers.

The back story:

As every year, Soccerlens pre-ordered Football Manager (through Steam) to ensure that we would get our hands on the game as soon as possible. As luck would have it, this year Sega also sent us a review copy of FM 2012, which left us owning two copies (you can read our FM 12 review here).

We’re now giving away the Steam pre-order of Football Manager 2012 as a gift – one newsletter subscriber at random will be selected and the gift will be sent to them via Steam (to their Steam username / email address).

To win your free copy of Football Manager:

1. Subscribe to the Soccerlens Newsletter.
2. Competition ends on 19th October – a winner will then be picked at random.
3. Soccerlens will contact you to get your Steam details, and then send through the (digital) gift to you.

It’s that simple. Want the new Football Manager? Just subscribe to the Soccerlens Newsletter by 19th October.

This contest is now closed. Congratulations to Dan Bramhall for winning this year’s free copy of FM 12.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Football Manager will be released on 21 October 20112 – here’s a look at how Miles Jacobson and co. can make the game even better for the millions of football fans who religiously play the game every year.

So we know there won’t any players tweeting from within Football Manager 2012, nor will you see wives inadvertently sharing team news the night before. But there’s plenty of fun still to be had on the non-playing side of FM, here’s a look at a few things that could work wonders:

1. Advanced Football Stats

There’s a big debate in football on whether football stats are important to the game as they are deemed to be in other sports – luckily in a football game (it IS a game, right?) that debate is settled for us. Football Stats are immensely important, because everything in Football Manager is based on numbers.

With that being said, I’m aware that the new Football Manager will bring about several improvements in terms of match analysis and preparation, however, here why I think advanced football stats should be included in Football Manager (2013?):

Advanced statistical analysis based on player performances – per game or across the season. For example, it would be good to know how many goalscoring chances a player creates, or where on the pitch he wins his tackles, or if his passing is defensive (backwards / sideways) or attacking (sideways / ahead), where he takes his shots from and what % of those shots are goals…the list can go on and on. In terms of evaluating a player’s effectiveness on the pitch, it’s imperative to be able to track a lot of different data points that are traditionally missing from football analysis.

A real-world example – David Silva’s impact in the 2011/2012 season so far has been based on where he finds himself on the pitch but also because of the movement of the players around him (as well as the tendency of the City full-backs to push up more than before. The quality of the forward four, as much as Silva’s increasing ability to influence the English game, has raised City’s game as a whole. Understanding exactly how that happens – through video replays and statistical analysis – can help you identify the factors that make it successful and then using the same principles for the youth team / for your own team.

Add to this the ability to tactically review a game as well a player’s individual performance, and you’ve given hardcore Football Manager players another level of realism in experiencing what goes into managing a football club.

2. Better Betting Odds

Admittedly a personal preference but something that can improve the playing experience while still keeping the game football focused. Currently the game provides betting odds in terms of how likely a team is to win a specific competition, however this feature can be vastly improved by making the latest football betting odds available throughout the course of a season, updating them based on injuries, January transfers, form and the departure / lack thereof of the manager. In addition, a nice touch would be to provide betting odds for each

The purpose isn’t to promote betting – on the other hand, just as the odds at the start of a season help identify who the strongest contenders are, the odds during the season will help players track which teams are doing well and which are in a wretched run of form. Pre-match odds and half-time / in-play odds would also help the player understand where his team stands relative to the opposition much more accurately in the shape of success percentages (i.e. odds).

3. Enhanced Person Feedback

Currently the only way to get information on a player is to scout him. Presumably this translates into a real-world analysis of the player, including watching him play / in training as well as talking to his current / past coaching staff. Understandably, the later part (talking to other people about the player) is left out of the details (this is Football Manager, not Football Scout), but that’s how real-world scouting takes place when you want to evaluate someone’s personality (short of interviewing them / handing them a personality test, and I doubt scouts do that to players).

But what if you were able to get the same detail of information about the support staff – what if you could see the personality of your assistant manager, get feedback on potential coaches and their suitability to join your backroom staff and generally be able to get detailed feedback on each coach, scout, physio or manager – just like you would in real life?

Apart from helping you build a stronger backroom staff, it also has the tactical benefit of allowing you to understand the mindsets of the managers you go up against and incorporate that in your pre-match preparations.

So there you have it – three suggestions on how to make Football Manager a more realistic football management simulation. A lot of this information is already there in the game (although in terms of football stats they may need to add a layer of formulas and potentially add more scripts for person feedback) – it’s just a case of sharing it with the players.

This article originally appeared on FMScout.com in September 2011.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Football Manager 2012 is due to hit the shelves before Christmas, and our good friends over at Football Manager Stories have just snagged an exclusive interview with Miles Jacobson (OBE), Studio Director at Sports Interactive, the company that develops Football Manager.

Here are some quotes from the interview:

Johnny Karp: I recently read that, in your view, every player has his own way of playing FM. I definitely agree with that and I want to know more about your way of playing the game. For instance, do you use different tactics for home and away games or do you stick to one tactic for all games?

Miles Jacobson: I have 2 tactics that I tend to use, and build the team around them. One is a 442 with wingers, a ball winning DMC and a box to box MC, and the other is a 532 with wingbacks, a ball winning DMC, a box to box MC and a deep lying playmaker. I’m mainly a wheeler dealer though. Lots of loan players when managing Watford outside the Premiership, and young players for the future, mainly.

JK: How do you feel about players that cheat in FM in an attempt to get better results quickly?

MJ: I don’t agree with them doing it, but people can play the game any way they want to. If they enjoy it more by cheating, then that’s fair enough – I just don’t understand why someone would want to do it!

JK: Did you ever receive angry letters or emails from wives complaining about their husbands’ addiction to Football Manager?

MJ: No. I’ve had a few people complain when I’ve met them, but no letters or emails.

JK: We already know that Everton and a few other clubs are using the game database as part of their scouting network, do you have an estimate on how many clubs are using FM to improve their chances of finding players?

MJ: We have absolutely no idea, outside of Everton. They’re the only club we’ve had an official deal with.

Go to FM Stories to read the full Miles Jacobson interview.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Football Manager 2012 will be launched before Christmas (most likely in November to give enough time for holiday-season Football Manager madness and the inevitable post-release Football Manager patch). No official launch dates have been provided as yet, although you can also expect a Football Manager 2012 demo to come out a month before the game is set to launch.

Sports Interactive / SEGA have released some first-look screenshots and video previews of the new FM 2012, we’ve included them below as well as what’s expected to be new in the latest incarnation of THE most addictive football game in the known universe.

Football Manager 2012: New Features

Counting over 800 new features, not including changes to the rules of the games 50+ leagues, Football Manager 2012 promises to be the most realistic, immersive and playable football management simulation ever for any fan who has ever dreamed of making the big decisions, both on and off the field.

Key new & improved features for Football Manager 2012:

Transfers & Contracts – significant changes to the transfer and contract systems, including loyalty bonuses, better implementation of amateur and youth contracts, an improved transfer centre and the ability to lock areas of the contract negotiation when you aren’t prepared to budge. This helps you to manage your budgets and gives you flexibility in what you offer money hungry players, or agents, as incentives.

Scouting improvements – using several real life scouting reports, a new in-game report has been devised which includes squad analysis, tactics information and information about goals scored and conceded alongside lots of other scouting improvements, giving you all the information you need to prepare before kick-off and throughout the season.

3D Match Improvements – new animations, a whole new crowd system, improved weather system, more stadiums, plus two brand new cameras – “Behind Goal” and “Director Cam” as well as all other camera angles being reversible – meaning you can watch and analyse every aspect of every game.

Manage Anywhere, Anytime – the ability to add or take away playable nations in your saved game as often as you want. Manage in that country at the start of the next season- meaning you don’t have to stay in the nations which are chosen by you to be playable at the start of your career.

Tone – a whole new level has been added to team talks and conversations, with the new tone system, which allows you to specify the way you want to say things – be as cool as a cucumber by saying things calmly or throw tea cups around by saying things with passion. There are 6 different tones to choose from with specific comments per tone.

Intelligent Interface – a new adaptive layout system, which means the higher your screen resolution, the more info is easily at your fingertips. The new interface also contains new filters, customisable columns, a new tactics screen, and lots of new overview screens.

Brand New Tutorial – standing separate from the main game, a mode to help new players find their way around the game easily, whilst also offering tips to experienced managers on how to get the most out of the game, as well as a new in-game “how to” system.

On top of these key innovations, there are lots of areas of the game that have had huge improvements, such as the media system, press conferences, the youth system, newgens, the social networking options, friendlies, international management and many more which will be detailed in a series of video blogs over the coming months, alongside more information about Football Manager 2012.

Football Manager 2012 Videos

Match Engine Preview

Adaptable Layout

Football Manager 2012 Screenshots

Image 1 of 19

To keep up with the latest FM 2012 news and updates, follow Soccerlens on Twitter and / or Facebook.

Also Read:

FM 2012: Miles Jacobson Interview (FM Stories)

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

As of 12th March 2011, Football Manager 2011 was not only still in the top 20 of sold copies in the UK, but it was at number 2 in those charts. 

It’s pretty phenomenal to be honest, and is in itself a reflection of the passion for the game in this country. We just absolutely love football, and as Johnny Karp wrote in his recent article, a brave soul has even dared apply for a job at Middlesborough on the back of their stellar record in….Football Manager. The article’s debate is on the pro’s and cons of prodigious football manager players going into management as more and more the Football Manager series links up with the footballing world (Incidentally, here is Johnny Karp’s Football Manager Stories website). 

Now Messi may have dribbling and technique stats of 20, but he's only got 9 strength so you can take him!..What?

It’s one thing to look at players stats on a screen, and quite another to watch hour after hour of video of a player who looks like he could be a star, only for that player to just have been having a good day/ been on steroids. Finally, it’s completely different to watch a game from on high and notice tactical flaws in your play, and quite another to watch this from ground level, where the view is simply a footballing battle.

Yes, the transition is huge, but hang on, hang on. Don’t throw your Mourinho suit in the fire just yet. Have you ever thought about coaching? 

Where are the England football coaches?

Bear in mind that fact at the top of the article, because the difference between Football Manager players and coaches is simply astonishing, and I’m not talking about the transition this time but simply the numbers. According to this article (based on a previous Guardian article) England are shockingly behind countries in the rest of Europe with regards to coaching staff – that is to say ‘UEFA data shows that there are only 2,769 English coaches holding UEFA’s B, A and Pro badges, its top qualifications. Spain has produced 23,995, Italy 29,420, Germany 34,970 and France 17,588.’ 

That, as a statistic, is a massive indicator of why England are so near yet so far - simply not enough coaches to nurture the talent that a country like ours undoubtedly has. In fact, the former quoted article has more damning statistics - horrible even. For every English coach of the above qualified level, there are Eight Hundred and Twelve active English players. Just consider that for a moment. That is like having one teacher per small secondary school. 

Rumours that Messi was created by Sports Interactive are unfounded.

That, translates as one fully qualified coach, for every, single, first, reserve and youth player in the premier league, championship, league one, and league two, and lots of other leagues. 

Forget about the gripes that top class players like Lampard, Rooney and Gerrard are not good enough - that is the problem. 

Which could well translate as good news for you - where there’s a problem, there’s an opportunity, as someone may or may not have said at some point. Football manager games are among the most popular, if not the most popular games in the UK. They are brought by die hard passionate football fans who love the intricacies of football management and coaching, and scouting, and tactics. And most importantly there is die hard passion. 

Football needs you, Football Manager fanatic, not because you have taken Chelmsford City to the Premier League or created a Champions League winning team from your academy, but simply because you love football enough to get involved in these little details. There is a huge hole in the market that can be filled by people who are so hooked on the beautiful game that they will watch pixels replicate football for the love of it. 

It’s not even as if we as a generation are less well equipped to coach either. As a people we have more information at our finger tips then ever. More analysis, more creativity, more idea’s more football teams. The opportunity is there for Football Manager players to make a transition into football management proper – that is if you want to. 

So yes, people could dismiss Football Manager players getting into the professional game as a far reach – I did. But consider, in that gaming population lies an absolute goldmine of coaching, scouting, hell eventually even managing potential. The knowledge of the game is undoubtedly there. Perhaps more so then ever. 

The FA’s official website is the ideal place to launch your coaching career, starting from the bottom and moving on to the very top. You can even find the appropriate courses near your location (and the McDonalds sponsorship might mean free food while you play Football Manager…who knows?). You can even take a course online.

Hell, Mourinho started out as a translator. Why can’t you start out as a football manager player?

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Back in 2006 a guy named John Boileau made a courageous move and applied for a vacant job as Middlesbrough manager. You might remember that Boro were a Premier League club back then but you surely don’t know who John Boileau is, right? Well, this guy took Nuneaton Borough from Conference North to the Championship in eight seasons and also won the Swedish top flight with small club Kalmar FF but you surely didn’t read about those achievements in the papers because all that happened in the 2005 version of the popular computer simulation game called Football Manager.

John sent a letter and a CV to Middlesbrough Football Club chairman Steve Gibson and was honestly hoping to be invited for an interview. You can see his letter and CV in the pictures below.

Well, he didn’t get that interview but he did get a reply from Steve Gibson, a pretty humorous one:

This story is quite entertaining and I guess you can admire both John’s courage and Mr. Gibson’s sense of humor. Being a Football Manager fanatic myself and also being recognized as a pretty good virtual manager, I was encouraged by some of my friends to do what John Boileau did and apply for a real football manager job. I didn’t because I probably lack John’s courage but I did think about the possibility. Miles Jacobson, studio director at Sports Interactive, has recently revealed that there are some clubs that are using the Football Manager 2011 game as part of their scouting network (Everton confirmed that), and it’s no secret that most modern managers are using computer analysis to improve their teams’ performance on the pitch. So why shouldn’t a real football club consider such applications from Football Manager aces? Here’s a list of pros and cons.

Pros

1. A Football Manager player is more likely to think outside of the box than Roy Hodgson for example. I know several virtual managers with great analytic minds and loads of creativity and I guess I would hire one if I would own a club.

2. Most Football Manager players know a lot about football tactics, maybe as much as most real managers.

3. Football Manager players are avid football fans, they love this sport and their passion could be a great asset for any club that would take the leap and hire one.

Cons

1. Football Manager players might not know too much about the physical aspects of training, they might ruin the squad from that point of view and quite fast! This is the main reason that stopped me from applying for a real manager job, I don’t know anything about training and I guess I’m too old to start learning now.

2. The players might not respect the new manager, especially at a high-profile club. Would Drogba listen to me if I’d tell him to press more or come deep to link play? I seriously doubt it. Does he listen to Ancelotti? I don’t know, but he probably does.

3. A Football Manager ace might not be such a convincing person in real life. He is able to make top-notch tactics and analyze football in great depth but most of them might not really be able to motivate a team because that takes talent and charisma and some people just don’t have those.

The list of pros and cons could be expanded, of course, and I am looking forward to reading your suggestions in the comments. I don’t know if the pros outweigh the cons or if it’s the other way around but in my view a Football Manager fanatic should never be a solution for a top-flight club. However, I think that semi-professional clubs might want to look into that, their players don’t train too much anyway and a great tactical mind on the bench could make a difference now and again.

Do you think that you have what it takes to move from pixels to the pitch? Then you could start sharing your FM 2011 stories on my website, FootballManagerStory.com, and maybe give the interested clubs a better look inside your manager mind.

About The Author

Johnny Karp is the owner and founder of FootballManagerStory.com, a football manager fan blog that started in 2008 and grew to become one of the most popular blogs in its niche. The website has mostly Football Manager career stories but it also provides tactics, guides and downloads that can help people to enjoy the game even more. Johnny’s managerial feats include winning the Champions League with the Blyth Spartans, getting Dorchester Town to the Premier League and also dominating English football with Notts County. He is currently taking Vauxhall Motors FC all the way to the top.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Everybody loves Barcelona, I know I do! Well, everybody except the Real Madrid fans I guess, but they might also be impressed by Barcelona’s sexy attacking football under the guidance of coach Pep Guardiola.

I have always been an admirer of the club since the days of Johan Cruyff but I have to say that today’s Barcelona is playing the best football I have ever seen in my life (I’m 31 years old by the way and I’ve been watching football since I was around 4 or 5).

I am also known as a Football Manager addict, you surely know the simulation game that allows every football fan to take charge of a club and drive it to glory or get sacked if not. Although I like to manage lower league clubs, which I do in Football Manager 2011 as well since I took charge of Blue Square South club Vauxhall Motors FC, I am trying to give my teams some of the Barcelona spirit.

You can never replicate Barca’s style with a lower league side though so I tried to make a Football Manager 2011 tactic that would resemble the real Barcelona and the only way to build that tactic was to take charge of the Blaugrana themselves!

I started the process during pre-season and the foundation was the tactic that I am using in my Vauxhall Motors game. Before you start laughing I have to state that the tactic I’m using in the lower leagues is attacking but not as attacking and creative as the one I ended up using at Barcelona. The first changes were made in the formation, the one I am using at Vauxhall is a flat 4-4-2 but for Barcelona I adopted Guardiola’s formation as you can see from the screen shot below.

Barcelona’s Formation

Let me describe in a few words each player’s role in the formation:

Victor Valdes -Sweeper Keeper – the man in charge with saving shots but also with sweeping behind the defense, that is if anything gets past Pique…

Daniel Alves -Wing Back – a tornado down the right flank, providing interceptions high up the pitch, passes and also goals now and again.

Gerard Pique -Ball Playing Defender – an unusual centre back, a man with good technique that gets involved in the attacking build-up and also scores when you would least expect him to.

Carles Puyol -Limited Defender – just a centre back really, but a damn good one. He’s the team captain as well.

Maxwell -Wing Back – same duties as Daniel Alves but not as attacking.

Sergio Busquets -Defensive Midfielder – the man who gets the ball back and passes it quickly to Xavi. He did pretty well in attack as well in some games, great potential.

Xavi -Deep Lying Playmaker – he’s Xavi, that’s all! The team’s playmaker, the man who never misses a pass and also manages to score a few.

Andres Iniesta -Central Midfielder – a real genius in the middle of the pitch, a creative player that provides some killer passes and some fabulous goals. I have employed him on the left wing on a few occasions but I think that the place that suits him the most is in the middle.

Lionel Messi – Inside Forward – the greatest player in the world,  a tremendous talent that can decide a game all by himself. I have put him in different roles in attack but eventually left him as an inside forward, sometimes on the right flank and other times on the left.

Pedro – Inside Forward – a speedy player that can do some real damage on counter attacks. I often set him to switch flanks with Messi during the games to confuse the opposition defenders.

David Villa – Complete Forward – the man with the killer instinct, a great finisher but he also participates a lot in building the attacks.

Barcelona Team Instructions

The next important thing in setting up a Football Manager 2011 tactic is the team instructions, the changes made there shape the way the team would be playing on the pitch. As you can see I tried to replicate Guardiola’s approach in terms of strategy, philosophy, passing or pressing but I also went into more detail and set up the corner kick and free kick taking strategies to match the real-life Barcelona. The only thing that might be a bit different is the tempo, it might be higher in my tactic than the real Barca but that gave the best results in the game and made the matches a bit less boring.

The Results

Building a good Football Manager 2011 tactic is a process that takes time and a lot of tweaking. The first version of the Barcelona tactic was employed during pre-season but then I have made several changes before finally settling for version number seven, just in time for the El Clasico against Real Madrid. As you can see from the screen shot below the results were quite rewarding despite the continuous tweaking that went on under the hood: 20 wins and 2 draws in 22 competitive games. In the Primera Liga we played 13 games, won 11, drew 2, scored 41 goals and conceded just 6.

Click on the image above to see the full-scale view of results.

We have shown good attacking football in all of those games, but the real test for the tactic was the eagerly awaited derby against arch rivals Real Madrid. I made the final changes to the tactic a game before that but I was still not sure that it would ensure a victory against Los Blancos.

The first half was satisfying, we took the lead through David Villa who latched on to a delicious through ball from Andres Iniesta before coolly slotting home and Real Madrid were unable to create any clear chances before the break. Unfortunately Cristiano Ronaldo made it all square two minutes after the re-start following a corner kick and some weird marking from my defenders.

The result was unfair, Barcelona were certainly looking like the better side! Lionel Messi did justice though, he scored two beautiful goals to round off flowing team moves and the crowd at Camp Nou was ecstatic! You can watch all the goals below:

Barcelona 3-1 Real Madrid – Goals and Match Stats

Click on the above image to see a full-size image of the match statistics.

Barcelona v Real Madrid – Average Positions

I had to make three changes during the match against Real Madrid: Eric Abidal for injured Puyol, Javier Mascherano and Adriano for tired Andres Iniesta and Maxwell. The average positions analysis shows how the team acted during the match, pretty high up the pitch and very compact (just like the real Barcelona).

Barcelona Goalscorers

One of my main concerns was how to find the ideal role for Lionel Messi, it would have been a huge shame to waste such a talent. I seem to have found the right place for him after all, he scored 19 goals in 20 appearances, but the most pleasing thing was that no less than 13 different players had found the way to the back of the net during the 22 competitive games that I played.

Download Barcelona FM 2011 Tactics

You are welcome to try the tactic yourselves and provide feedback, criticism and suggestions on how to improve it. Download the Barcelona FM 2011 Tactics here.

About The Author

Johnny Karp is the owner and founder of FootballManagerStory.com, a football manager fan blog that started in 2008 and grew to become one of the most popular blogs in its niche. The website has mostly Football Manager career stories but it also provides tactics, guides and downloads that can help people to enjoy the game even more. Johnny’s managerial feats include winning the Champions League with the Blyth Spartans, getting Dorchester Town to the Premier League and also dominating English football with Notts County. He is currently taking Vauxhall Motors FC all the way to the top.

Visit FootballManagerStory.com for more FM goodness!

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

For those who have been longing for this, long no more friends, the FM Genie Scout 11 is here!

Genie Scout is probably the world’s most popular scouting tool for Football Manager and it has been helping to extend the possibilities of finding, sorting and shortlisting players staff, controlling their progress, making the selection of your first 11 and tactics easeier and observing invisible attributes in FM.

You can download the FM Genie Scout 11 from here.

Compatibility

Works with Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Football Manager 11.0, 11.1, 11.1.1, 11.2 and 11.2.1. It deosn’t work with Mac but there’s a step-by-step guide available to make it get to work with Mac.

This is a beta version and it is not compatible with compressed save games. To check if your saved game is compressed or not, check whether “Compress Save Games” is ticked or not in FM preferences.

How-to

• Download the zipped archive and extract it
• Double click the installer file named “genie11_setup_b128.exe” to install
• Follow instructions
• Launch the Genie, load your saved game and you don’t need to have FM running at the time

Key Features

• Player search by all the possible criterias: from basic (name, age, nationality) to the hidden attributes
• Calculation of the player’s rating using the 100% system for each position. Attributes which are most needed for this particular position are main in calculation process
• Possibility to change the calculation system
• Calculation of the potential attributes and potential rating based on these attributes (maximum values which could be reached by the particular player)
• Possibility to watch scout’s report (FM style) which tells you the main information about the player: best played positions, comparison with other players, pros and cons and the selling value of this player
• You can observe the statistics of how do all attributes, current and potential ability, rating, reputation change
• Possibility to search staff with any criterias
• Coach’s ‘training rating’ calculation into each training category
• Possibility to filter players and staff by clubs and national teams
• Possibility to compare two players by all the attributes
• Possibility to search clubs by the following criterias: average team rating, average age, financial part, stadium capacity etc.
• The program can pick an optimal squad for your team with any standard tactics, taking injuries, suspensions and physical condition into notice
• It can also choose an optimal tactics scheme for your team
• Possibility to create your shortlist, export it to FM format and import FM format short-lists for further information
• The data may be also exported into CSV, TXT and HTML formats
• You can easily save screenshots with any player, staff or club information

Source

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Football Manager has always been called a PC game and the thought was that the only users bought the game to play on their computers. However, sales figures from the UK have revealed that this year’s football manager is on the top of charts for all platforms, not just PC’s. While the game is mostly played on personal computers, the handheld version is also doing well, while FM2011 has topped even Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 in sales based on all of the consoles the game was released on.

According to PC Gamer “if there were any doubts about Football Manager’s status as a PC gaming colossus, they’ve been dispelled today by the release of the results of the official UK all-format charts for the UK. Football Manager 2011 has rocketed to the number one spot, beating the likes of Fifa 11, Fable 3 and Fallout: New Vegas to go top of the table, and it’s only been out since Friday.”

Football Manager 2011 Tops sales Charts in the UK

Here is the all-platform sales chart for the UK:

01. Football Manager 2011 (Sega)
02. FIFA 11 (EA)
03. Fable III (Microsoft)
04. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft)
05. Professor Layton and the Lost Future (Nintendo)
06. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo)
07. Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda)
08. Medal of Honor (EA)
09. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (LucasArts)
10. The Sims 3 (Konami)

An impressive show for Football Manager, topping FIFA11 in the UK, which is a pretty impressive achievement considering the hype and promotion of Fifa11 in the UK. Bravo Sega and FM2011, for producing a really good game this year and achieving record sales.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News