Let’s get this shameful thing out of the way. Every year in Football Manager, I choose to coach Manchester United. Joint – or, ahem, Men’s UFC – is the team I support in the real world, that’s my thought process when I start a new FM archive. There are basically two philosophies: stylish, trendy options, managed somewhere a bit trendy, a little bit out of the spotlight, maybe AS Saint-Étienne, or a bigger challenge like AFC Wimbledon or your local super challenger- The loser of choice; or, you manage the team you support. Technically, we’re not talking about the third way (PSG), but broadly speaking, those are your options.
The reason I like Manchester United is because they both are a bit of a crossover. I know this club like the back of my hand and I’m desperate for us to win but I don’t like seeing Manchester City win the game for the other five attacking midfielders in front of us and frankly I just wish all I had Dreams can come true. At the same time, Manchester United is a messed up club and it brings me immeasurable joy every year to step into the breach and be the hero to fix it. So, like I said, the best of both worlds: Favorite team fantasies plus the fun of mending something fundamentally broken.
Where does Football Manager 2022 appear? Well, this year more than ever really captures the experience of modern football management. Much to my joy and a lot of pain, playing FM22 makes me feel like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
I’ll go back to that, but first let’s step back a bit. The FM22 has changed more than you might expect at first glance, with a series of subtle but highly impactful tweaks to how things work under the hood. The biggest of these is a revolutionary change to the race engine. The animations, in the hundreds of 3D games you’ve played in previous years, are actually tied to the classic 2D discs – like in the classic view your buddies still call “Champion Manager” stick with animation. Now, according to developer Sports Interactive, players can leave those discs during the animation. Most of the time, this just results in a very pleasing curve run here or there, but it can also bring things like Cruyff turns and more flexible pivots for the players themselves – you The type that always thought existed, but, if you go back to FM21, you suddenly find yourself gone.
It also has a knock-on effect on how other things work in the game, and the knock-on effect is amazing. It’s one of the great successes of football managers trying to capture the spirit of the real thing over the years, because as someone named Jose Mourinho once said, a given tactic is a lot like a blanket that’s a little too short. You can pull it over your shoulders or you can pull it off your toes, but you can never have both, so every strategy, every concrete decision, is about one outcome at the expense of the other, a benefit Change a cost. In FM22, the consequences are harsher, more pronounced, sharper than ever, and your toes are colder.
It’s urgent that Sports Interactive likes to provide a great example of how it ties into the new animation. More freedom of movement for players means their movements can be more freely influenced by your tactical preferences, and the entire system of how your team applies pressure has been reworked to reflect this (and presumably to ensure it’s more balanced ). Just like Antonio Conte might be yelling at the fact that he was half a yard away from their man and dashed to the training ground to relocate him, you have to pay attention now -a a lot of Note – If you want your press to really work at the highest level, pay attention to the little details. This means obvious things like lines of engagement and lines of defense, and defensive width is more of a strategic tool than a literal one. Previously, in my experience, it was based on a fundamental trade-off between trying to block crosses and attacking wide, at the expense of being stretched and easier to hit the middle, so I would have my team press aggressively, but still Show the perimeter players on the defensive end because I’m backing big man Maguire to win any headers from those extra balls into the box.
Now, at least in theory – I’ve found that these things take months to determine in the real world – it seems to be more about the direction your players are approaching when pressing, the angle of their body is cut off Certain passing paths and focusing the game on certain areas. The opposition directive now takes this more into account as well. I always feel these are a bit vague and more of a trap where you can get your players to do contradictory things, just follow the advice of your stupid assistant manager, which I still do to some extent – but A smaller, crucial one.
The purpose now is for them to reflect your overall pressing approach. The wording has been reworked to reflect the modern lexicon – pressing the trigger is the new name, not whether or not it simply “turns off” the player – the goal is more for you to use these instructions to tie in with the whole tactic. If you’re trying to push a team down to the touchline and then use a narrower defensive setup, it’s not a good idea to show the left-back on their weaker foot, as it will take your players from an open The angle of the interior of the pitch. Well, it’s still a trap, but it does make more sense.
What’s more, stamina — or in many cases the lack of it — is more influential now. Improvements to the AI mean players are now “aware” of their ability to sprint, which sounds a bit like Judgment Day, but usually just means they won’t press if they’re exhausted. I’ve found that they also get tired quicker and quicker – even those who can usually run a full day – although I’m personally not at the end of the season but the impression is that as the race increases, this is the case It’s only going to get worse. My players, despite some rigorous micromanaging rotations, have overcome some accumulated fatigue.
I would be concerned if this system were added to the FM21. FM21 brings some great new data analysis systems – especially the obvious expectations, and others that are far from it – but in terms of actual, actionable data, it goes beyond knowing whether you’ve created With enough range chances or conceded too many goals, things are a bit of a limit. Building on last year’s, FM22 has added a new data center, another big headline for it (apologies to the new overlapping centre-backs – you guys are neat, but I’m allergic to playing back three).
data center is superior. For the first time as far as I can remember, there are actually far more features than I could reasonably imagine. A key question for me is, when I’m hard at work with early-season pressing experiments, where is it where you can lose most of the ball and another where you can regain it.Different management styles on different teams will care about different types of analysis, but for myself trying to please a picky board with attacking football, also trying to actually won, figuring out why I can’t keep the ball despite my players’ high passing ability has taken some proper detective work. The magic is that if you know where to look, the information is actually there.
In addition to this, there are some other major key changes. I can’t say I like deadlines. On this holiest day of football, the game is now overwhelmed by Sky News’ signature Dangerous Yellow. For football fans who hate the tedious, disgusting money cult (yes, I know I support Manchester United) of real-world games, it’s annoying, and like the real thing, it’s actually fun to play, A full dedicated centre for last minute transfers and the real hustle and bustle of the game. We care that these kinds of things are bad for football and frankly bad for humanity, Fabrizio Romano is the new saviour for many 14-year-olds, News Corp wins. But it’s a fact of life. It’s interesting.
Speaking of disgusting, brokers are more prominent now than ever – the broker dialogue added last year is kind of like a cheat code, letting you gain some handy knowledge about asking prices and players’ interest in you, but with little to no trade-offs or beyond that one time consequences of interaction. Now there’s a trade-off – talk to an agent, you can sign semi-commitment to buy players, or “not interested”. Saying the former without quickly following up on a big offer would annoy the broker. Saying the latter would annoy the proxy. Either way, my indecisive self could do something a little more uncertain, being placed in a binary choice that seems somewhat arbitrary given that I can say “we’ll consider it” in the real world Frustrated – However, from a pure gameplay standpoint, it makes sense. There is now a consequence of calling all the agents present to ask about the players – you have to be prepared to put your money where your mouth is.
There are two other smaller tweaks on that note. Happily, the transfer value now represents what the selling club is asking for the players – that is, their actual value from a financial standpoint – rather than an arbitrary figure independent of what you’re willing to spend and what they’re willing to accept. Scouting reports, less pleasant, now include analysis reports in them. Compared to the data center business, I’m honestly not that impressed with what the analyst report in Football Manager has to offer, and has been since its launch a few years ago. They’re a small thing, but they need a little improvement because right now the most important message they can possibly give is that the new centre-back you’re looking for is the seventh-best centre-back in the league in terms of headers.What this tells me right away is: it’s useful to know who these six players are better one In the winning header; it doesn’t tell me who these six players are or where (if any) I can find them.
Still, it’s just a petty complaint in a sea of huge, influential, brilliant new changes, all of which, in the end, come back to my point about poor Mr Solskjaer. Football Manager has rewarded your obsession since introducing the potentially exhausting training revamp a few years ago, though it’s still practical enough for those who want to tell their team to get out and express themselves.
Now, with the FM22, it takes it to another level. In an ideal world, perhaps it could have a training remake in it – adding more endurance training isn’t the same intensity as Guardiola’s cones to divide the pitch and drill the grid into each player’s deepest subconscious. Exact match. But we’re getting there. The old “headless chicken” gegenpress doesn’t work anymore. You might finish a few games early, about yes, but there’s going to be a tinge of uncertainty in things. A sour taste of victory. A glass jaw began to emerge from the shaky guard. A sense of impending doom.
Just like in the real world, ultra-high pressure can occasionally cause beatings — not just like That The Manchester United-Liverpool game, but among all the other less bizarre results we’ve seen recently. Aston Villa 7-2 Liverpool, Bayern Munich 7-0 Barcelona, Germany 7-1 Brazil. Just like in the real world, in FM22, it now takes an obsessed perfectionist manager to erase those imperfections, just as in the real world, it takes a lot of high-quality data to back it up. It’s not impossible, but in Football Manager 2022, it’s definitely harder to survive at the top, aside from the atmosphere. Compulsive cleaning of my own club mess is happier than ever.
