Hey all,

So I was just curious, are any fellow Giantbomb members playing this years Football Manager at all? The game came out on Friday in the UK (at retail and full launch on Steam, I think there was a Beta access for pre-order's a couple of weeks before launch).

If so, what team(s) are you starting out as or making you main save? What formations are you using? Who are you buying and selling?

Personally, I have gone with Manchester City for my first save. I assumed I would be sacked pretty fast (as previous Football Manager games I get sacked usually around the January transfer window due to how poor I am at learning the tactics and making a good team). However, with my City save, I have been forced to not sign anybody at first as we had no cash to use. This forced me to manage the tactics to the squad I have. I have been rolling out with a 4-2-3-1 formation at the moment, with two CDM's (one as a ball winner, and one as a deep lying play maker), then two wingers (either Navas or Sterling on the right usually, with, surprisingly, Nasri on the left or a rotation of Sterling there and Roberts/De Bruyne on the right), and support playmaker, usually Silva (unless he is injured then De Bruyne there instead).

I have not been doing amazing in fairness, I am first in the league, but only by 3 points in February (Chelsea are leading the attack to catch me) and we have lost about 4 or 5 matches already, but, first is first and I am not sacked, so that is good. Cup wise, we got knocked out in the entry round in the League Cup and we just beat Liverpool in the FA Cup (so into the 6th round, or Quarter Final as it really is) and we have Chelsea at home. In Europe we actually won the group (English football fans will know that's an achievement in itself haha) but lost the first leg of the first knock out round to Valenca 1-0.

Anyway, I hope to hear from others who are playing and just talk about teams, transfers, tactics, and our love for this game!

Thanks for reading.

I wasn't planning on getting it on release this year, but everything kinda lined up right on Friday when the game came out. It was payday, I got paid £200 more than I expected this month, and I could get 20% off a retail copy of the game, so I decided to treat myself to it.

When I got home, I realized that I had probably made a mistake. I don't have a monitor or desk for my PC, it's hooked up to my TV. And FM isn't the kind of game you play sat on the couch 10ft away from the TV. Even with the text scaling set to 125%, the highest setting, I can barely read anything on the screen.

I've thought about running it on my PC and streaming it to my laptop via Steam's in-home streaming, since it won't run on my 7 year old laptop unless I want it to take hours to simulate matches. But I can't seem to get the Steam streaming stuff working reliably. Either way, I'm going to have to come up with some solution to this problem before I can actually play the game.

I know this story wasn't exactly the kind of response you were looking for in this thread, but at least I tried to post something semi-relevant.

@mattyftm: Who do you want to manage if you get on? (I have a feeling your a Sunderland fan? But I am a Liverpool fan managing Manchester City, so my loyalties are not in the game ha).

Yeah it is not a couch game really, have you got the Steam streaming box at all? (Or is that to HDMI for TV use?) Unless you buy yourself a new PC to play football manager....? :P (That's half joking, the amount of hours I used to play these games, I can not say that I have not upgraded previous PC's just for the sake of being able to run more leagues on this series).

I'm well on my way to taking Rayo Majadahonda to glory... ous relegation.

Bought it when the beta access or whatever they call it went live. Only played for about an hour. At some point I'll sink silly hours into it but Fallout is eating up my game time at the moment.

Last year I had a Man United save going but I wasn't taking it too seriously. Ignored youth setup and just chucked around the ludicrously generous transfer budget I got every year. Save one season where things went a bit off the rails I was pretty much dominating. This year I'll probably drop down into the conference and see how far up I can drag a team. That or see if I can figure out how the MLS works.

@karaterauser:

Is this the Spanish team? How is it working with the lower end team there? I have only managed Real Madrid/Valencia when I try to manage a team from the Spanish leagues, primarily as I get the impression there is no money at all for teams outside of the top 5 or 6 teams there (so the likes of Real, Barcelona, Valencia, Atheltico Madrid, etc).

@samuraibudgerigar:Yeah I would not mind managing Seattle Sounders in the MLS, but, as you have eluded to, the rules on player purchasing/trades would confuse me, as would the restrictions on who you can actually sign (so only being allowed 3 designated players for instance). Whilst I understand the reasoning for it in reality, for the game it would confuse me.

Who do you plan to manage on this years game?

@johnlocke said:

Yeah, I'm a Sunderland fan. In recent years managing Sunderland has been super tough, because they never have much of a transfer/wage budget, and all of our players are shit. You pretty much have to sell anyone good just to buy some defenders who aren't going to let in three or four every game. And then you're not going to let many in, but you're left with no one who can go forward. Not to mention there are always shit players on exorbitant wages who no one wants to buy because they don't want to pay those kinds of wages.

I remember back around FM08 or 09 when there was always a pretty decent transfer budget and you could do pretty well with Sunderland. The initial squad still had most of the problems that it does today, but at least you could do something about it more easily. I had them in the Champions League after two seasons one year. Those were the days.

Either way, I'll probably sink a few hours into Sunderland and hope for the best. If it goes terribly (it probably will) I might ditch that save and start a new one with a team a bit lower down the leagues. Maybe Wycombe Wanderers or Hartlepool. I've got a soft spot for both of those teams. Or I heard you can start your own team in this one. If that works well, I might give that a go.

@johnlocke: Yeah, in the 2da B, the third tier. It's interesting because it's got 80 teams across four regional divisions, so you can get a massive disparity between teams. Some reasonably sized clubs that might have about £30-40k a week to spend, down to semi-pro tems like mine with a wage budget of £4k...! as well as some bigger clubs' B teams.

Hard to get out of too, with so many teams playing for 4 promotion slots, you have to go through playoffs even if you finish top. Not much money anywhere outside the top half of la liga, like you said. Lots ofl loans and free transfers. Actually that makes it sound like hell.. but I'm enjoying it for some reason.

I had fun with an MLS save a few years ago, but it definitely felt a bit like the rules were shoehorned in a system that wasn't designed for them and even the AI struggled with it.

I'm still sticking with FM13 which is the last one I had any joy with. James Perch, man. James Perch.

@johnlocke: Funnily enough, I was just thinking of setting up this thread myself. I'm going to be getting this over the holiday period and thought if there were any duders on here who might be up to try out the Fantasy Draft mode.

PLayed about 12 hours so far which is not a great deal compared to last year at this point! Too many other great games coming out!

I'm considering creating a club and going from the bottom but my first game has been my Nomad save as with every other year. Go in unemployed and see where I end up. First team I landed at was West Brom where I saved them from a relegation fight (Dead last, no wins at Christmas and ended up just above relegation) the game got a little funny and the board were apparently unhappy with that (Initial season objectives before my tenure was a mid-table finish so was being unduly punished for this) so quit and went to Serie A and picked up with Lazio who had also just avoided relegation. Small budget, high expectations and an aging squad of mediocre players. Tough little challenge ahead!

@shindig: As weird as it sounds, I actually get nostalgic about my FM13 Wolves team. Two Premier League titles and Champions League finals on the trot somehow made dingy old Wolverhampton an attractive place to play football.

I will be buying this likely during the steam sale at the end of the year. I played about 2.5k hours of fm14 (a lot of which it was just running) and will be happy to see the improvements and keep playing the new one for 2 years.

Nice to see! I'm a season ticket holder at Pools for my sins, get to about 75% of away games too.

As for FM16 I'm not sure I'm really into it this year, might just be a lack of time thing, not being a 15/16 year old kid anymore my times of sinking hours a day into FM are way past me, like last year I got involved in one of the challenges on the SI Forums, you start off unemployed, sunday league rep, no qualifications and have to aim to win practically everything, it's called The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge, pretty fun.

@gatehouse: I would certainly be up for doing some Draft Mode some time. I have played a bit with friends and its quite fun, the draft selection of players certainly adds to the interest.

In terms of nostalgia, I think my save taking Stockport County into the Premiership was a highlight. We got into the Intertoto cup but lost to AS Roma in the final round on away goals 4-4.

The club creation I think is based on you taking over a club, then totally emptying the squad and building a squad based off the budget you had from that team (so say if you did it with Chelsea, you would get far more money to draft players into your team with than say, Carlisle United) and then you name your team, pick a logo, change the club kit, etc.

Reputation plays a part in that stuff so the actual draft is a little restrictive unless you get a bunch of loyal players.

@shindig: In what sense? I am curious to hear about this, anything that helps me with draft mode sounds good to me :P

You've kind of said it yourself. The team you pick is not a blank slate. The base reputation stays so its not an ultimate team situation of getting all the players you want together without some of them thinking, "Why am I at Carlisle? Fetch me my agent."

I am usually a day one purchaser however work and an abundance of other games meant that I didn't put anywhere near as many hours into FM 15 as I have previously (although we are still talking about 150ish hours) so I'm still sinking time into my Portsmouth FC save on there. I've not seen anything that's really jumped out at me that means I must buy this new one.

I do think this game has lost some of luster for me. My time with these games has had progressive stages;

Premier Manager - Spent hours watching my Dad play this, he would constantly say stick to Sensible Soccer these stats are a bit boring. However I kept watching and watching learning the subtle nature of mechanics and learning about sponsorship deals and contracts (albeit very simple versions), eventually when he was done with Premier Manager (I think to start playing 2) he let me have a go and was surprised at how well I took to it, delivering league title after league title to faithful Vauxhall Motors fans.

Championship Manager - As became a teenager I remember being obsessed with italian football and spent most of my Champ Man days playing as AC Milan.

Football Manager - The Sports Interactive/Eidos split happened when I was starting University and having a core group of friends who would all get together with their new university laptops and play night after night of FM. Sometimes we'd play in the same game but the most fun was enjoying the tales of the trials and tribulations of our own worlds. I'll never forget my mate taking Boston United from the top to the bottom of the football ladder in consecutive seasons, he was losing 1-0 in the play off final with 87 minutes gone and somehow pulled out a 2-1 win in normal time the four of us were dancing and cheering as if England had won the World Cup!