The Byline

So, you’ve decided to manage an underdog... a club which has to fight tooth and claw for every point and where draws often feel like wins. That might not appeal to everyone, but for some of us there’s no better feeling than giving the league’s big hitters a run for their money. 

Choosing an underdog isn’t too difficult, but how are you going to defy expectations and set them up for success? FMSamo walks us through the things we should take into consideration when setting up an underdog.
 

If you’re anything like us, you’ve probably got a go-to save for every edition of Football Manager. It might be your local team or a club that has a special place in your heart. That traditional save is like a comfy pair of slippers.

It can be the perfect way to test out the new features in each game within familiar confines. However, we thought it was about time you looked at spicing up those go-to saves and doing things a little differently for Football Manager 2021, so here’s our list of six ways to give your traditional career a twist.

Life is full of important decisions. Choosing where your latest Football Manager career begins is one of them. @MaddFM shares five things to consider when choosing a team to lead in Football Manager 2021.

With the nights drawing in, there are few better feelings than getting stuck into a long-term Football Manager save. Whether it’s ending an unwanted continental record or rising up the divisions, there are challenges out there for every manager. Here are six of our favourite long-term challenges for you to smash in FM21…

One of FM21's headline features is the Recruitment Meeting - a handy addition that allows you to harness your backroom staff’s knowledge and experience. As well as the now-familiar Scouting Centre, Recruitment Meetings give you an opportunity to fine-tune your club's transfer policy and plan for the long-term. Correctly using these meetings is an effective way to focus your Scouts on priority areas. Hopefully this article will help you understand the full potential of the Recruitment Meeting.

It’s fair to say that podcaster and lifelong Football Manager fan Iain Macintosh has a mixed record of success on the game. Silverware was easier to come by in the early days of FM, when having one fitness session on the training schedule each month was considered the pinnacle of sports science.

In recent years, while the game has grown more realistic and intricate, Iain’s tactical blueprints have been chewed up and spit out by the match engine year after year regardless of how much tinkering, tweaking and loving care had gone into crafting them.

This year, Iain promises it will be different. That’s mostly because he’s hosting a brand new podcast – The Football Manager Show by The Athletic – where he’ll actually get to hear wisdom, advice and tips on how to master some of the core aspects of FM, directly from the people who make the game which will hopefully help Iain (and more importantly you, the listeners) get more out of FM21.

We sat down with Iain to discuss his love of the game and what it is that makes him come back year after year.

For me, the most influential section at the beginning of any FM save is the Team Report. This area shapes how I set up tactically and which areas I focus on in the transfer market. Football Manager 2021 improves the Team Report with additional functionality that will most likely lead me to visit it regularly throughout the season. I’ve come to The Byline today to go over this area and the improvements in FM21. Let’s begin…

In this strangest of years, the global transfer market has looked a little different. Windows have been open at different times and clubs are keener than ever to find value. As always, we kept our eye on the comings and goings across the footballing world and here are nine transfers we’re excited about.

With Early Access for Football Manager 2021 on the horizon, we’re sure many of you have already been contemplating which corner of the globe you’ll head for first. Picking the place where that all-important first save in the new game begins can be a tricky business though. To help you, we put our thinking caps on and picked out eight of the most exciting teams to manage in FM21. 

We’ve been crunching the stats at Football Manager HQ to illustrate your collective FM20 journeys by the numbers - how many of you played the game, how many goals you scored, the number of trophies won and, sadly, how many of you got asked to attend that dreaded board meeting at some point over the last nine months. Let’s break down those numbers in more detail.

For me, player development is one of the most exciting and engaging aspects of a Football Manager save – that thrill of bringing a youngster from your academy through to the first team is hard to beat. It’s not just about the excitement, though, as the success of a long-term save often hinges on your ability to bring through and develop youth prospects.

FM20 gives us more control than ever over the development of our youngsters with Playing Time Pathways built into contracts and a very in-depth Development Centre which puts all the relevant information at our fingertips. This comes with more detailed advice and suggestions on training, mentoring and loan time than ever before.

This wealth of information can be overwhelming, especially if you've just taken over at a new club and are not as aware of the youth players as if you had been there for a couple of years.

In this blog post, FM blogger InvertedWingbacks gives you a more specific, in-depth example of how all the youth development tools work together in order to shape the youngsters in your squad.

It’s all going so well. Your team seemed comfortable, even with a narrow lead. Now the opposition have equalised with a speculative effort that went in off your central defender’s backside. You’re chasing the game as the clock ticks over into added time and suddenly you win a corner. You need this to go in, you need just one goal to win the game because the referee has already checked his watch twice. As your central midfielder trots over to take it, you realise that your palms are sweaty and the ends of your nails are, well, not there anymore.

But then a serene calmness comes over you. You’re good at corners, you’ve scored plenty from them this season because you put the time in and worked on them. You set up your approach and then drilled the lads in training session, after training session, after training session to the point they could replicate them on the team bus. The ball floats over and there’s your target man at the back stick, unmarked, with enough time to down an espresso and a biscuit before heading the ball home.

Does that sound familiar? Probably not. Definitely not the espresso and the biscuit part.

AFC Fylde researcher and FM content creator @CharlieTangoFM is here to help you achieve that sense of calmness, with a beginner's guide to corners.