Football Manager for Dummies - Guide

Miscellaneous quick-tips - Various quality-of-life tips

• Attribute colouring - changing values and colours to your personal preference can help you judge players at a glance
  
• Nickname your players/staff to stay organized - Scouts based on their Assignments or Scouting Knowledge, so you know what to look for if they leave/players based on their Coach Report weaknesses or undesirable Player Traits
  
• Having a custom Player Search view that includes Media Description and Release Clause columns can help you identify Wonderkids and bargains
  
• Stay on top of your youth teams - get rid of players that will never be good enough, so they don't steal playing time from your hottest prospects
  
• Gaining Work Permits - try getting an Affiliate Club from Spain, Serbia or Poland (lenient nationality conditions)
  
• Use Screen Flow (Options -> Most Common) to track foreign youth leagues and scout best performers
  
• Continue Game Timeout (Options -> Interface) can save hundreds of clicks
  

Quick Tips by herne79

• The tactical settings we use are the tendencies with which we ask our players to do something, whereas the player's attributes determine how well (or differently) those "instructions" are carried out on the pitch.
  

As an example, if you instruct your winger to dribble often via his role and/or additional team/player instructions, he'd better have the attributes necessary to be able to carry out those instructions if you want him to do it with a good degree of competency.

• In effect, Player Traits are another tactical instruction, albeit built into the players themselves rather than allocated on the tactics screen.
  

For example, if the player you intend to use already has the "run with ball often" Trait, consider whether it's necessary to also give him an additional PI to dribble more. It's these type of combinations which can sometimes really switch on (or off) a system.

• Playing matches at an appropriate level is also important for player development and this importance changes depending on a player's age. For players below the age of 18, Training takes precedence. Playing matches is still important but Training is the "alpha" aspect here. Once they hit 18, this flips.

  Playing matches at an appropriate level now takes precedence, while Training - although still important - becomes the beta rather than the alpha.