Miles Jacobson, the studio director at Sports Interactive, started and finished his FM2011 blog on Mirror Football.
Like last year, Miles provided insight into the new features for this season’s release.
This page was updated almost daily whenever a new blog post got out, providing a summary of the original blog post. We summarized a total of 24 blog posts.
The 24th and final blog posts is: The new user interface revealed...
Day Twenty (3) - How the stars of tomorrow are created... today
[original source @ mirror football] The twenty fourth post of the new blog talks about the changes to the user interface.
Here are the most important points:
Roughly 100 new user interface features. Some notable ones are:
New skin
Improved usability: easier to get around the game screens
Redesigned the News and Inbox system, and expanded the News Subscription system
New Set Piece Creator: customising your corners, free-kicks and throw-ins became easier
Redesigned Contract Offer screen and introduced the Conversation screen
Many little tweaks including the won/drawn/lost indicators in the Fixtures screen, the player on/off indicators when you make a substitution, the penalty shootout bar, or the ability to minimise and maximise all the match widgets with one button click.
Various other improvements 'under the hood'
Day Twenty (2) - How the stars of tomorrow are created... today
[original source @ mirror football] The twenty third post of the new blog continues the talk about newgens.
Here are the most important points:
Another key improvement with regards to newgens is the modelling of youth recruitment for the clubs
Previously SI had information for the club youth facilities and a possible youth academy in the database and this information was used in combination with the club reputation to decide what level of newgens would be generated for the club each year.
Better modelling small clubs with established grass roots youth systems who have a pedigree of producing players that end up moving to bigger clubs
Modelling the big clubs who may be well funded and have a strong first team based on players bought from elsewhere but are struggling to find quality first team players through their own youth systems
Introduction of the youth recruitment rating - and as a result revised the way newgen players get their potential ability calculated
Improved the way the game keeps track of the match experience gained by the players
The newly revamped training module allows AI managers to train their players more efficiently, resulting in more lifelike development
A lot of fine tuning this year to the way newgen player names are created
A lot of work that has gone into improving the modelling of players turning into non-players as they age
Day Twenty (1) - The rise of the newgens!
[original source @ mirror football] The twenty second post of the new blog talks about the changes on newgens this year.
Here are the most important points:
Once real players retire, the game must go on with newgens (newly generated players)
They are created by the game each year to simulate a new generation of youth intake for the clubs
New addition this year is the use of newgen templates.
That gives the game a guideline on how the player attributes for different types of players should be spread out, to ensure their attributes look and feel more lifelike and that the key attributes that are essential for the type of player being created are all realistic.
Set of templates based on the player nationality, position and height... for each position for each nation with an active league selected
For all the inactive nations the player templates are split into continental sets, so South American newgens will use their own templates that will be different to the ones used by European newgens for example
The twenty first post of the new blog talks about the new data editor.
Here are the most important points:
The data editor that lets you change, or add, information about any of the 440,000+ players and staff in the game, all of the clubs, stadiums, competitions, or even add ones that aren’t in the game.
Lots of changes and additions to the editor this year:
Last year's editor gave the user the ability to add your own customisable leagues to the game
The biggest addition to this year’s editor is the ability for people to add in your own continental competitions; create competitions like the Anglo-Italian Cup or create those that are brand new from your imagination
Tweak your own individual league transfer windows and transfer rules; change the rules required for work permits or even expand various leagues play-off rules
Set up your own youth and reserve team leagues, either revamping those leagues however you want, or editing them to mimic their real life counterparts
The creation of cups has also been re-designed allowing users greater freedom, giving you the ability to micro-manage your competitions by setting the format of the cup from round to round
Make mass changes to both players and clubs simplifying this process and making it quicker for users to make their own custom databases
Screens that keep track of all the changes that you made, as well as a more than helpful undo button
Search by the unique ID’s of players or teams and easily swap teams divisions. This means if you want a big club in the Conference, a couple of clicks and you could have multi-million pound players suddenly playing in the bottom tier!
Create your own agents and assign clients to them that will appear in game
The twentieth post of the new blog talks about Steam, achievements and the new Trophy Room.
Here are the most important points:
2 ways that you can install – via Steam, and “normal” install
The “normal” install means installing from the DVD to your computer, and requires you to keep the DVD in the drive at all times whilst playing the game
Install via Steam gives a number of benefits:
Automatically get updates for the game whether they be patches or data updates, delivered through their fast bandwidth
Get an extra “skin” for the game, called the retro skin
Steam achievements (86 overall) are exclusive to those who installed through Steam. This helps you keep track of how you are doing in the game and what you’ve achieved as a manager
SEGA introduced a new feature to the official website for the game called the “Manager Trophy Room”. Trophy Room takes some of achievements that you are able to get if installed via Steam, and publishes them on the website using so that you can really show off to all of your mates about what you’ve achieved in the game
You are able to log onto any PC or Mac and play the game, anywhere in the world; you don’t need the disc with you. And you do not need to be online to play the game via Steam, you can easily set the game to play in offline mode
A patch is a free update that is provided after a game is released that can add things to the game, or fix things too.
Sports Interactive always provide a data update for PC & Mac users a few weeks after the end of the January transfer window to ensure that all of the players are at their new clubs.
This year, they were planning on two updates. One in December to fix any issues, and one in February/March to update the transfers. But with the Liverpool situation, they decided to do a patch on the day of release, which will include:
Liverpool will have the correct owners
An extra “skin” for the game, a dark version of the main skin
Added extras for those people who install their game through Steam
You can be on the next podcast, for which 50 people will be getting the chance to ask Miles questions live at HMV Gamerbase in London!
The seventeen post of the new blog talks about the new Twitter and YouTube features.
Here are the most important points:
You can update your twitter account directly from Football Manager 2011 whenever there is an applicable news item. This can be done either automatically (the game automatically updates your account) or manually (a button appears on relevant news items that allows you to post to twitter).
Applicable news that can be tweeted, include:
Breaking records, such as highest league position, most times winner of competition, etc
League fate, such as league champions, won promotion, etc
Cup fate, such as cup winners, knocked out of cup, etc
There is a hashtag on those tweets, so if you want to see how everyone is getting on, add the #FM2011 hashtag to any searches you have
You can upload goals or highlights packages from matches directly to your own YouTube account. It’s all done from an easy to use screen inside the game where you can choose the camera angle to upload, the resolution of the upload, the clips to upload, and then you press a button, and it’ll appear on your YouTube channel as soon as it’s been uploaded and processed by them.
You can set your Twitter and YouTube preferences at any time by looking in the manager menu in Football Manager 2011, and clicking on “Social networking settings”
The sixteen post of the new blog talks about the introduction of agents to this year's version.
Here are the most important points:
One of the biggest new features in Football Manager 2011 is undoubtedly the contract negotiation system which has led to a much wider use of agents inside the game.
Contract negotiations are now done 'live', with you effectively sitting in a room with an agent until a deal is struck, or not. However, they might not come back to you in a few days to ask for better terms - that just depends on whether they are talking to other clubs too, or not.
Agents play a key part in these negotiations, although some players do represent themselves.
There are five different agent 'types', ranging from those who are more interested in what they are getting out of the deal than the player, through to those that take a small cut to ensure that the player gets the best deal possible.
It is possible to build up relationships with agents over time, and obviously it'll be easier to negotiate with those that you already have a relationship with in the game.
Player do sack agents too if they don't feel they need one, or aren't happy with how the agent is representing them. So if a player you've tried to sign felt it was his agents fault that the deal didn't go through, and decides to sack his agent, it's worth trying to sign him again.
Some extra new contract clauses that are regularly used by clubs that are making their debut this year, whilst also correcting the way that some payments are made. These new clauses include, but are not limited to:
Top division promotion increases and decreases
Payments for getting into the team of the year
Promotion bonuses
Wage rise after a certain amount of appearances
A percentage of the next transfer fee.
When you are now trying to sign a player from abroad who isn't allowed to join until his 18th birthday, you can now offer him a "normal" contract of up to five years, rather than having to offer a youth one with a max of two years.
The fifteen post of the new blog talks about the new transfers features this year.
Here are the most important points:
The 25 man squad limit is in place in a number of country's leagues this year, including Premier League (unless the player is under-age, such as Balotelli).
Due to the current financial climate that’s affecting most of the Western world and football too, many clubs spent their transfer budgets for the season in the first window, or didn’t have any to start off with!
Relatively new phenomena in the Premier League this season, which is the “loan to buy” deal. These have been regularly part of football for years on the continent, but have made up a tiny percentage of the deals in England over the last decade until this summer. Around 20 per cent of transfers in to the Premier League this year are season long loans, with options to buy.
The transfer system in Football Manager 2011 reflects this current state of the world. It means that in the first season, it’s pretty hard to sell players, as clubs don’t have much money, and their squads are full, so you’ll see even more loan to buy deals than normal in this first season.
Because of the better financial management of clubs in FM compared to real life (clubs have no option but to pay tax bills in FM!), it does mean that the transfer market becomes more vibrant in the future – and hopefully shows that the new “financial fair play” rules that are coming in will work out well for football in the future.
The fourteen post of the new blog officially confirms the dates the demo will become available.
Here are the most important points:
The UK version of Football Manager 2011 on the PC & Mac went into manufacture on Saturday afternoon, which means the game went gold just before that.
As we have first publicly predicted, the demo will be released on Friday 22 October. Both vanilla and strawberry versions will be available through direct download and torrent on that day.
For Steam users, the strawberry version will be available to download/install on Thursday 21 October (in the morning).
The following quickstars will be available on the strawberry version: England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, but you can only play one countries league at a time. The demo is half season of gameplay, so it's really 12 half seasons.
You can restart the demo as many times as you want and play it for as long as you want to too.
The thirteen post of the new blog talks about the new match day training options, known as match preparation.
Here are the most important points:
Training in FM has previously only focused on improving the players as individuals, now it's also a tool to make the team work better as a whole by training formations and tactics in training.
By default, your team will train in whichever tactic you’ve set up as your main tactic, but also gives you the choice to add 2 more tactics.
The training module tracks the level of familiarity to each area of the tactics for each team, and tracks formation, mentality, passing style, creative freedom, closing down, marking, tempo and width, giving feedback to you as the manager in how familiar the squad are with what you are asking. An example:
When changing into a tactical setting that the team is not familiar with, default starting levels for each area are worked out from the existing levels in the same tactical area.
Adapting to a new formation will be much easier if the team had already been training a similar formation before.
You have more flexibility on the match preparation training as familiarity levels do not "reset" that easily, unless you go for some totally different tactical settings to what the squad is familiar with, or sign a whole squad of new players, who will be training from scratch to adjust to your tactics.
The better trained your players are and the more familiar they are with your tactics, the better they will play.
There are special focus areas (team blend, defensive positions, attacking movement, defending set pieces and attacking set pieces) for the squad that can be chosen aside from the regular tactical training. These assignments can be changed before each match, based on the next opposition to make the most of their weaknesses and your own strengths.
You should be careful not to overload your players, as over training can harm development, increase the risk of injuries, and also make players unhappy.
The twelfth post of the new blog talks about the new training regimes this year.
Here are the ten most important points:
Training is now split into two different areas – general training, and match day preparation.
The training screen might look similar to last year's, but this is not just a cosmetic change; a much more realistic result from training for all teams in the football world.
Coaches are now auto-assigned at the start of the game to optimum assignments, so for example a more attacking based coach would be set to attacking tasks.
The default coach assignments act as a guide: If you sign a new coach, he will be automatically assigned to a training category most suitable for him - When a coach leaves and there's a training category without a coach, the coaching assignments are automatically adjusted to make sure all areas of training are still covered.
More default training schedules in the game now, with general, goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, forwards, and youth general and youth goalkeeping.
Easy to assign players to specific training schedules, as it’s all done by a simple drop down button by the player’s name.
In the player profile training section, the training evaluations can be done by the coach of your choice, rather than just the assistant manager.
The training section of the player profile now also features all the key information about the player training and his attribute development on the main view, with an attribute history chart that tracks the changes more detailed than before.
You can get your players to train in specific areas which include quickness, strength, stamina, jumping, finishing, freekicks, corners, taking and saving penalties, long throws, dribbling, technique, agility, balance, heading, agility, crossing, passing (kicking and handling for goalkeepers).
The individual training assignments allow you to hone your players and help them improve any areas of their game that might be keeping them from being the impact player they could be.
The eleventh post of the new blog talks about more new graphics enhancements for the match viewer this year.
Here are the most important points:
If you were able to watch in 3D in Football Manager 2010, then it’ll still work fine with Football Manager 2011 too (as will all other parts of the game) as the minimum computer spec needed is about the same as last year.
New background scenes, if you aren’t managing a huge club with a big stadium . There are three different types of background, field, street and industrial. The game selects an appropriate outside scene to use for a club by determining the population of the area.
Player models (the way that players look) have been completely revamped; each player now has a minimum of 1,000 polygons, and a maximum of 5,000, depending on whether you are viewing the game on low, medium or high detail.
The stadiums have had a big overhaul with lots of improvements to the stands and terraces, and different kinds of roofs and other details, such as different types of dugout and even scaffolding!
Crowd models are improved, and you’ll see them move with the action too.
Lighting is hugely improved, with floodlight effects for night matches and better shadowing - particularly in the high graphics mode.
A new camera angle is introduced, called “TV”, which should give a similar perspective to how you would see the majority of the game on TV.
You can now set up a replay camera to be able to watch replays with a different camera angle to the rest of the game, and have options for replays for goals, key highlights, and goal action.
Introducing offside lines. If a goal is disallowed as offside, when you watch the replay it will draw a line where the last defender is, which shows you whether your player was offside or not; like real life, the refs don’t always get it right.
The radar screen, which is a mini pitch view, is now available to use in split screen mode. You can also change the size of the split, so you aren’t forced to use half the screen anymore.
A new opion “minimise all widgets” in the TV view, and a new widget called “overview”, which shows the goalscorers.
Weather can now change during the match, from rainy downpours to the sun coming out.
Even more improvements, such as visual representation of substitutions, the ability to turn on or off the player condition boxes, a new stat for crosses and crosses completed, a penalty shoot out bar, and you can now select multiple players on the pitch to view their names and condition, rather than just being able to select one.
The tenth post of the new blog talks about in what ways the match engine has improved, including the introduction of player emotions.
Here are the most important points:
3D view in game matches made its debut with FM 2009
Unlike the action football games on the market, SI are trying to create a real simulation of the full 90 minutes of a game of football
Working with ex-players, such as Ray Houghton, to ensure that the flow of the game is accurate, and that players positioning and movement is how it would be in real life
It's impossible to make players look like they do in real life, with over 430,000 players and staff that there are in the game, but the goal is to look like they are footballers at least!
Main improvement is the animations; nearly every animation in the game is revamped, while the contact points (the point where the ball and animation meet) are quite improved
Over 100 new animations, which relate to different kinds of kicks, headers, tricks such as step overs, and emotions
Emotions are something that are brand new to Football Manager 2011, and add an extra element to the visual look of the players. Some examples of how emotions are used:
inspirational players will attempt to rally the troops after your team concedes, whereas others will bury their head in their hands
players signalling their disgust at misplaced passes from teammates
players furiously questioning why a teammate didn’t pass to them instead of blazing a chance over the bar
A lot more varied goal celebrations in the game
You can see the videos and compare how the match engine in 3D view looked like back in FM 2009, and how it has been improved in FM 2011: FM 2009 match footage - FM 2011 match footage
The sixth post of the new blog talks about the latest league rules changes this year.
Over 50 countries' leagues playable and over 5,000 manageable teams in those leagues. There are different rules in different countries.
It's very important for SI to replicate each country's rules as accurately as possible, toward simulating a more believable football world. Let's look at some examples:
In Spain reserve teams have different names to the first team, and are allowed to play in the league structure; but of course, can’t get promoted to the same division as their 'parent' club.
At the MLS in America, the league, not the club, own the players and there’s a wage cap for all clubs which is valid for the whole squad apart from two “marquee” players, who can be paid whatever the clubs want.
In Brazil, you play in both regional competitions and national competitions in the same season, with how well you do in some of them contributing to which competitions you then play in for the rest of the season.
Miles picks a few rule changes that SI have put into the game this year:
New squad registration rules in place for the English divisions this season, in particular separated out the squad number and squad registration screens, so you can still give squad numbers to players that you don’t need to register.
Improved rule regarding who qualifies as a foreign player in France. There's now a link from the game to a website that explains exactly which countries count in France as being colonized.
In the Turkish league, if four clubs end up on equal points at the end of the season at the top of the table, there will be a play-off between them to decide who has won the title.
Added accurate support for who would be the Hong Kong continental competition representatives should one club win more than one trophy!
Reworked B-teams in the game (like the Spanish teams mentioned above), and this should stop any frustration that people who are managing clubs with B-teams, or managing the B-teams themselves, should face, and make it more lifelike.
Easier to move players from the B-team to the A-team and player biographies now take into account B-team performances when they report news on the player.
If there are eight B-teams in the Danish second division, no more can be promoted, and players in Spain can play at the B-team until the end of the season where the player turn 23, as long as that player is part-time or amateur.
The sixth post of the new blog talks about the improved match analysis system and how it can make you a better manager.
The match analysis system made its debut in FM 2010. It allowed you, after a match, to look at each individual player with a wealth of information about their performance in the match, all on one screen.
In FM 2011 this module is taken to another level, and have not only attempted to provide all of the information that a real-life manager would look at, but more too. It's now the perfect way to compare all of your players' performances in one place, and sort out the workhorses from the workshy. To be more specific, let's look at examples:
You can see exactly which of your players - or the opposition's - strayed offside during the game.
See where attacking or defending free kicks, corners and throw-ins occurred, and where the ball ended up.
You can also analyse clear-cut chances and half-chances, and see which players had them, where on the pitch, and what happened.
It’s not just for individual players any more – you can also see how your whole team, or the opposition, performed at the same time, all on the one post-match tactics screen.
Miles's 2 favorite new features in this area:
The view for average positions of players during the match, as this really helps you tweak your tactics and player roles for the next match. For example, if your wide midfielder isn’t getting forward enough, you might decide to switch his player role to being a winger, and make him more attacking.
The new heatmap, which shows where players have spent the most time on the pitch during the game either individually, or as a team.
The sixth post of the new blog talks about the boardroom interaction changes, the backroom advice changes, and the updated manager mind games module this year.
The boardroom is the area where you deal with your club's board, by making requests on finances, affiliations, stadiums and training. Until now... FM 2011 introduces new options; Miles's favorites are:
Expand the number of coaches or scouts allowed at the club.
Build a youth academy.
Buy a council owned stadium.
Ask to increase the percentage of transfer income to go into the transfer budget.
The chance to ask them to build a new stadium, if your own stadium can’t be expanded due to the local council blocking it.
Backroom advice was introduced in FM2010, and you had all of your staff giving you advice. FM 2011 introduces better presentation, and advice regarding the signing of young players, also more information added for reasons when suggesting criticising or praising a player. More things are now added that you’re given advice about, such as:
Staff suggesting increasing or decreasing the training workload.
Staff suggesting training a player in a new position, or for individual training regimes.
Staff suggesting dropping players when they’re in bad form.
Staff advising on how many point are required to survive relegation, or to achieve promotion.
Staff advising when players are unhappy.
More than 40 new options into the manager mind games module this year. Miles's favorites include:
Commenting on players the other manager is targeting.
Commenting on the oppositions pitch condition.
Commenting on a managers transfer style (such as going for big name signings, or concentrating on youth).
The fifth post of the new blog talks about how the interaction with players has improved.
A bunch of different character types for players exist in the game now onwards to a more believable football world. So you might have players who are ambitious, determined, laid back, need careful handling, will do what they are told, won’t listen to reason – just like real life.
You can talk to players (also the staff or the board) about multiple topics at the same time, and look to resolve any problems in a better way. You get instant responses from the conversation too, rather than having to wait to hear back a few days later.
There are various different stages of player unhappiness, so you really want to nip it in the bud early if a player is unhappy, or else eventually (and the speed will depend on the players personality), they may go to the press and make their unhappiness public and eventually become so angry that they won’t talk to you at all!
Example: Player unhappy and wants to move to a bigger club
He comes to you and asks for a move, and you tell him that you have big plans for the club, and you want the club to grow to meet his ambition. He might agree, and decide to stay, but he might also decide that he doesn’t believe you (all of which is driven by his, and your, personality).
If he says he doesn’t believe you, more options open up, and you could either dig your heels in, tell him that he’s disrespecting the club, offer to sell him straight away, at the end of the season, or in the next window.
Each player will respond differently to any of these options based on their character, and you could find yourself with a player who becomes even more determined to help the club succeed, or one that just sulks and you have little option to sell him.
These “manager promises” are also remembered by the player, so if you don’t act on what you’ve said, you could make not only that player even more unhappy, but also make his friends at the club unhappy too. Or vice versa, if a player is disliked by others.
Miles's favorite new additions for player interaction:
The ability to tell a player why they’ve been dropped to the reserves.
A warning for youth players that if they don’t improve, they won’t get a contract.
Being allowed to comment on a players performance in training.
The option to threaten a player with being transfer listed if their poor performance continues.
You can even ask a player to be less vocal in the media.
On a side note, managers' mind games and backroom advice are taken to the next level as well.
The fourth post of the new blog talks about press conferences and the newly added questions this year.
You either love 'em, or hate 'em. Which is why the option is there to ask your assistant to do them for you if you fall in the latter camp!
How it works: A bunch of journalists turn up from different publications and ask you questions, giving you five choices of answer.
More questions and more answer sets this year. Over 100 new questions, meaning the total amount of questions is over 400 now, which are now specific to how your team is doing, rather than being generic.
Changed the way of answering the questions. Previously you chose your answer and then pressed the confirm button, but usability studies showed that this frustrated people, so now a 'one click' system applies. Make sure you think about your answer before choosing it, or you could find yourself with some very unhappy players!
Some of the newly added questions on FM 2011:
Questions about the club's ex-manager when you take over a club (particularly if they've been successful)
Questions regarding new signings after they've played for a few matches
Specific questions for special competitions, like the Community Shield.
A new press conference following draws for major tournaments if your team are involved with them.
Questions regarding team selection when the manager may be considering rotating and/or resting players.
Signing former players and the reaction that will have around the club and amongst the supporters.
Questions asked when milestones have been reached both by clubs and players.
A whole host of new Cup-related questions.
Miles tested Twitter's integration to FM2011 during the weekend and for the first time in public. Read our summary here.
The third post of the new blog talks about the news issue that had risen, and Miles refers to his favorite new features from FM2011.
A couple of years ago SI made a decision to split the news about your team, and about other teams, in two. The decision was made as there was so much going on in the world that people playing it might complain about becoming lost.
That approach was wrong; it led to people knowing everything about their clubs, but unless they really took notice, they didn't know what was going on elsewhere.
On FM2011, all of the news goes to the same place, whether it be about your club or others. But the news is very configurable via a vastly improved subscription system.
A new extra element is added to news items by calculating all of the possible combinations before a match on what winning, losing or drawing that game will do to your league position.
Miles's favorite new features from FM2011:
More varied goal descriptions and better descriptions of player performances for post match reports.
New news item to show when players are about to trigger contract clauses or their contracts are running down.
More information on why someone has been sacked, or why you've been sacked (!) in the news item.
A fortnightly competition round-up highlighting statistics such as scoring and assist charts, man of the match charts and other bits and pieces to keep you in touch with the world around you.
News items when shock transfers are made, such as a player or manager dropping a couple of divisions.
A season expectations review from your board to let you know how they think you've done in the last season.
Player debut news items.
Improved news items regarding major finals to give them the build up that they get in the real world.
Squad number reaction news, where the press react and comment on squad number allocation and situations where players have not been registered in a squad.
A yearly training round-up which goes nicely with the new training system in Football Manager 2011.
The second post of the new blog is a recap of what is already announced in the three feature announcements SI made to date. But just before that, Miles does a quick flashback on FM2010 and how the production of FM2011 kicked off.
FM2010 was a polished FM2009, but still had 150 new features.
SI dev team consists of nearly 70 people working full time now, 60 odd contractors, plus a huge research and translation team.
At the start of 2010, SI dev team spent three weeks locked in a room going through every idea that they got for the game.
400 new features in Football Manager 2011, some of them small, some big, some re-written and some entirely new.
What's already announced for FM2011:
Live contract negotiations, including the introduction of agents
Twitter & YouTube integration
Huge improvements to the 3D match viewer, including 100’s of new animations, player emotions, new stadia, and new celebrations.
A new training system, including match preparation
Dynamic league reputation
Lots of new news items, and a better news display system
New match analysis options
A set piece creator
A revamp of the press conferences
A new system for generating players
Improvements to b-teams and amateur teams
A new conversation player interaction system
The editor will have 30 new database fields that can be edited to give you even more power when modifying the game.
The initial post of the new blog is an effort to attract newcomers to FM. This means that all of us who are already playing the game know most of what Miles explains. Here are the 10 most important points though:
FM is a simulation of the working life of a football manager; all football fans have opinions; playing FM you find out if your opinions are valid or not!
More than 50 countries' leagues that you can try out in the game, lower divisions too.
An editor allows you to add leagues that aren't already there.
All of the clubs in the game have their real-life squad, down to the U-18 squads, with over 430,000 players and staff from around the world currently in the database, each of whom have hundreds of individual stats and attributes that make the players as real to life as possible.
The FM database is so popular that gets used as a reference tool for real football clubs.
SI has the largest network of scouts in the world, with over 1,000 people in more than 50 countries and regions who are watching players week-in, week-out, at first team, reserve team and youth level.
Full match simulation that allows you to watch your team playing against the others in 3D, 2D or with just commentary, and you control the tactics of your team completely, even down to being able to adjust how individual players should be playing.
Anything a real-life manager would do, you can do in the game, including press conferences, player interaction, training, buying and selling of players, balancing wage and transfer budgets, scouting.
It’s down to you to decide who to buy and sell, but if you think you’re going to be able to attract world-class players to Crewe then you’ll be bitterly disappointed, as the game tries to be as accurate as possible.
You don’t need quick reactions, just the ability to make decisions, and make your opinion count.
About Stam
I started FM Scout for fun in the distant 2004. I'm proud of how this place has grown into a vibrant community and I try my best to improve it every year. Husband and father of two.
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We are always looking for quality content creators, capable of producing insightful articles. Being published here means more exposure and recognition for you.
Even though this page is not as popular as I would like it be, given the amount of time it takes to process each blog post and come up with a summary... I think it's the best way to have all the important points raised in the official blog posts in one place. And by choosing to show/hide each summary it saves space and time.
However, it's the first time I'm doing this, so I'd want to see some feedback regarding the way my summaries are composed and how I can do it better. Whether you guys like this effort or don't care about it. Any well-intentioned comments are welcome.
![FM24 2025-26 Real Fixture & Results (Start in 2025) [21-9-2025]](https://www.fmscout.com/datas/users/realresult_artv2_257759.png)
Discussion: FM 2011 Blog with Miles - Summaries
3 comments have been posted so far.
However, it's the first time I'm doing this, so I'd want to see some feedback regarding the way my summaries are composed and how I can do it better. Whether you guys like this effort or don't care about it. Any well-intentioned comments are welcome.