Yes there are a hefty number of blockbuster games being released later this year and yes they are normally the games that I will put on my GOTY list but there is always a game I forget to mention when compiling them lists. In total Football Manager has eaten up more of my time than any and probably every other game combined! I’m not going to sit here and say it’s an addiction but man I need this shit!! “It can’t get better than this” Every year I say this but every single year Sports Interactive bring me something that blows my mind yet again. This year looks to be no different. There are a plethora of new features in Football Manager 2012, which should give any FM fan a rather excited friend living in the basement. With Sports Interactive opening there blogs for this years iteration, they have detailed pretty much all of the new features so here they are explained.
Transfers & Contracts
When I’m playing the game, I’m the archetypal “wheeler dealer” manager. Buying, selling, negotiating. Finding that young rough diamond, turning him into a world superstar, getting the best years out of him, then selling him for a tidy profit at the same time. Here’s what is in store for me this year.
Let’s start off with improvements to amateur contracts. And the addition of proper “non-contract” err, contracts.
Non-contracts are very similar to amateur contracts in many ways, in that the players are able to move freely to other clubs if they are signed on non-contract terms. However, these players can earn money with appearance fees and bonuses possible.
Non contracts aren’t just for players either – you can offer non-contract terms to staff too.
Of course, these options are only available to you should the team be likely to use them in real life, so don’t expect these options if you’re managing a top division club!
One thing many of the community noticed from the original announcement and screenshots from a few weeks ago was the “loyalty bonus” which has replaced the “signing on fee”. This has been changed based on feedback from both our agent and chief executive contracts, as signing on fees are now paid throughout the length of a contract, and not all upfront.
Another thing that was mentioned then was contract locks. These have a huge effect in the way that contract negotiations are done now, particularly when you’re on a budget!
Say you’ve got a limited wage budget and a maximum of 5k a week, yet the player you want is demanding 7k. Rather than getting frustrated going backwards and forwards without movement, you can lock the 5k offer, and the agent will then look at other ways to make the player happy, such as looking at some of the other bonuses available, or asking for a percentage of any sale on the player. Or they could just accept. Or walk away. But at least you all know where you stand in the negotiation.
There are some other tweaks to contract negotiations too, such as making it easier to withdraw or change your contract offer, including the chance to re-negotiate terms with a player after the agent has provisionally accepted, in case another club comes in for them that might be offering them more wages.
And you’ve also got the chance to have different minimum fee release clauses, for higher division clubs, domestic clubs and foreign clubs, as well as a new contract clause – “pay increase after x international caps”.
What about when players don’t want to be at your club anymore?
We’ve increased the chances that players might ask for mutual terminations, such as when a team gets relegated, or if they are near the end of their contracts and transfer listed.
You can also, via a conversation, issue an ultimatum to a player who hasn’t agreed a new contract with you in the last year of their contract to sign, or they’ll be put on the transfer list.
And also via a conversation, can tell a player why you’re transfer listing them.
A change with agents sees them better servicing the needs of the club – if you suggest that you’re looking for a new goalkeeper in a press conference, for example, then expect to be offered more goalkeepers from agents.
You also now get much better feedback in the game on why a club that was interested might not put in a bid for a player.
As mentioned in the blog that included the news merge, I wrote about the revamp of the transfer centre.
This really now has become the hub from where you sell players – rather than it just having basic information there, it now has more information by default, and by clicking on the more info button, opens up to give you the full information on the screen. It’s really easy to compare all the different offers, and you can accept, reject or negotiate, them directly from the transfer centre screen, either grouped together, or separately.
Youth Teams & Newgens
Hello everyone, and welcome, to the Football Manager 2012 blogs. This year we’ll have a selection of written blogs and video blogs to show you many of the new features that are in this years’ forthcoming release.
You’ll be able to find each of the blogs at community.sigames.com in English, and they’ll also appear in local languages at our many partner sites, including marca.com (Spain), sofoot.fr (France), 442 (Australia), http://corrieredellosport.it (Italy), bold.dk (Denmark), sporx.com (Turkey) To see the initial FM 2012 feature announcements, you can find them at www.footballmanager.com, but we’ll be going into more detail with the blogs here. Today’s is about changes and new features regarding youth players and “newgens” which are the players that come into the game over time to ensure that there are a stream of players available for your whole career.
We often talk about how FM 2012 is part evolution for the series, and part revolution. So let’s start out with some revolution…
In previous editions of the Football Manager series, you didn’t have much control over the youth squad. Each year you’d find a bunch of players dumped into your youth squad at the start of the season. Not any more.
With FM 2012, we’ve given you more control over which players make it into your youth squad. Towards the end of the domestic season, you’ll get a news item in your inbox to inform you that your youth candidates are now ready to be assessed. Your coaches will already have assessed them and will be able to give you a scouting report for each one, as well as your assistant making recommendations to you on who you should, or shouldn’t, give a youth contract to.
Your staff will also arrange a match between your current youth squad, and the youth candidates so you can watch them in action, and you can also choose to have a further look at the players by allowing them to play in normal youth team matches for the few weeks when you are making your decisions on who to take on.
They are initially treated as an extra squad, so it’s easy to see who they are and scroll through them using quick flicks. After the youth candidates have played their evaluation match against your current youth team, they will stay on with your youth team as trialists for the following few weeks.
It’s a whole new level of control for those of you who want to micromanage to the lowest level– but as we know that this isn’t something that everyone will want to do, we’ve also made it so that your assistant can look after who to take on if you don’t want to go this in depth alongside the other things that you can ask your assistant to look after, such as team talks and press conferences.
One thing that we always need to balance when we’re adding in new features is that people play the game in different ways.
We know that some people will love the extra control on youth teams. But we also know that some people don’t bother with youth squads at all, just signing ready made players from other teams in the game. There are also many who manage at a lower level, and struggle to balance their finances between having a youth squad and the needs of the first team.
So we have an option for those people too.
So, for them, you can now ask your board to scrap your youth set up entirely. This will mean no new players coming through, and no need to try and get wages together to pay for the youth team. Your board may so no, of course, but if they’re looking to save money too, then it’s likely they’ll say yes.
There have also been improvements in the way that the newgens are generated, with country based positional “traits” now being used. In Brazil, for example, it’s rare that they have natural wingers in real life, with those players more likely to be wing backs, so you’ll see less Brazilian newgen wingers, and more Brazilian newgen wing backs.
The same can also be said of a players mental attributes. Players in Brazil, due to the way they grow up playing the game, are more likely to have flair. Players in Spain are more likely to play a short passing game. All of these traits are now reflected better in game.
We’ve also improved the way youth recruitment works at different clubs for their youth setup. The club’s youth recruitment network and youth facilities are not only linked to the quality of newgens produced by the youth setup, but also the scope of the recruitment. So clubs with excellent recruitment networks and state-of-the art facilities have the ability to attract youth players not just from the local regions, but from other continents as well.
There’s also been a big improvement in the way names are generated for all youth players, particularly in countries where there are lots of regions and names tend to be region specific.
Scouting
There have been significant improvements this year with scouting. Some of this was briefly mentioned when we originally announced Football Manager 12 a few weeks ago, but we can go into more detail now, as well as give you a few new nuggets.
One of the biggest improvements to the whole game this year is the new team report. We’ve very luck at Sports Interactive to have a large number of fans in amongst football, including many scouts who, with permission from their employers, give us the real scouting reports that they put together for teams when watching them for the manager.
And with FM12, we’ve implemented as much of this information as we can!
Not only do you get these reports when scouting the next opposition – you can get a team report from any club in the game world just by asking one of your scouts to scout them.
So what, exactly, do the team reports show you?
Let’s start at the start, and the first screen you’ll see if the “strength overview” screen which shows you the top 3 players at each position at the club, with star ratings for each player.
If you want to go into even more depth than this, just click on the “position strength” options, and you can then see the ratings and rankings for every player and position in the oppositions (or your, if the team report is on your team) squad.
The next option is “team comparison”. This allows you to compare various stats between the two clubs, such as average age, height, weight, caps in the squad, wage bills and how many players are unavailable.
When you are looking at your own team report, the team comparison option will allow you to do a comparison with any team within your own division.
Clicking on the “all positions” tab gives you a comparison of average stats amongst your players, and if you then look at the following tabs to look at goalkeeper, you’ll see a comparison specifically for goalkeeping stats. And with the defenders tab, you see a comparison specifically for defenders. And for midfielders, and attackers.
The “last match” tab gives you information about the clubs last match, with stats such as shots, shots on target, possession etc., and the ratings, goals, and status of each player in that match for both the team you’ve scouted, and their opposition, plus a text match report. And the option to go and watch the match.
Tactic analysis gives you information on how you’ve fared when using specific tactics, with information on how many times you’ve started with those tactics, how many minutes you’ve used them, how many goals you’ve scored & how many you’ve conceded. As well as a breakdown for goals scored and conceded against different rankings of team – higher rated, similar rated and smaller rated. Along with a paragraph of analysis. For each tactic used.
Tactics faced gives you the same information, based on the tactics you’ve played against.
Next up is goal analysis – this shows you at what time in the game you have scored and conceded goals, and where your assists have come from, the types of goals you’ve scored and conceded, and the type of assist for or against you.
It’s quite comprehensive, and isn’t just available for first teams – it’s also available for international teams and your youth and reserve teams.
There are also improvements and new things with player scouting too.
You now have the choice of using a scouting pool to scout players. This would send a scout or member of your coaching staff to go and have a look at a player without you having to designate someone specific.
The scouts are also more intelligent, and will even tell you if they think the scouting mission you’ve sent them on is a waste of time. And if they’re a decent scout and you hire them, they might even bring a ready-made scouting list with them.
They’ll give you feedback on a players best tactical role, will directly compare them to others in your squad in their scout reports, give better feedback on player weaknesses, can be assigned to scout all your feeder clubs & ask them to scout for specific attributes.
But don’t think they’re always clever. If you just scout a player once, and they aren’t famous, you’d better keep scouting them every year or so, or else you might just find some of their stats become hidden again.
Tutorials
Tactics
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