Football Manager 2011 for PC reviewed by Graham Clifford

There’s always a sense of despair when picking up a copy of Football Manager. You know what it entails; long nights where you try to convince yourself that you’ll just play one more game or month even, but no matter what excuse you give yourself it keeps you there till dawn. You become obsessed with formations, player instructions and set pieces while your anger rises to abnormal levels thanks to some crappy Estonian striker who misses chance after chance. Yes, these are the negative effects Football Manager can have on your body and mind, but in the end it’s all worth it as Sports Interactive has yet again delivered a great game that doesn’t just feel like an expensive update.

Player Power
For the first time in the series the power has firmly shifted to the player. Long gone are the days where they’ll blindly obey every order you throw at them. They no longer accept those ridiculous wage cuts, but now have the audacity to ask for more money. It’s all linked the new agent system. Each player now has an agent who negotiates on behalf of their client and you must deal with them in a brand new negotiation system which sees you and the agent working out a deal in one window with offers and counter offers made by both sides. This is a great new feature that adds realism and depth to transfers which were becoming quite stale.

Agents aren’t stupid either. They can really test your negotiation skills as well as your patience. Usually they demand exorbitant fees at the start and you have to try and counter offer at a lower price and meet somewhere in the middle, but some agents can lose patience and make unreasonable demands which you will either have to reject or give in to them. Take Jamie Carragher’s agent for example. When entering negotiations with him he demanded that Jamie earn £120,000 a week.

Telling him to go do one and accept some reasonable terms wasn’t working and he flat out stated that it’s £110,000 and 2.3m in agent fees or the deal is off. Off it was and I was listed as a disliked person in the agents profile screen. Lovely, now he didn’t want anything to do with me, but I had the last laugh as Jamie fired his agent and went with someone more reasonable. We worked out a nice deal which saw Jamie’s wages drop from £90,000 to £42,000 with a few threats on the side on reserve football if the deal wasn’t accepted (Threats are not in the game, but I issued them anyway). Nobody takes me on.

Take a seat right there
Having conversations doesn’t end with agents as the new meeting/chat system expands to players and the board. No longer will you have to make a request or comment and click continue to wait for a response. Instead, everything is now done in real time. Asking the board for a new stadium, feeder club or funds will only take a couple of seconds. It’s a wonderful new feature that has some serious consequences and plays a major part in the game. Players that are feeling unhappy will ask to meet with you and what you say in this meeting could shape your club’s future. You could instil confidence in your player or leave him feeling like a move away could be a better option.

I mostly used it for tapping up. Declaring my undying love for Ryan Shawcross saw him become disillusioned with life at the Britannia. Stoke’s summer demand of 12m quickly turned into 5m at Christmas as Shawcross had kicked up an almighty fuss. Dishing out compliments is the way to go. I managed to get some absolute steals for some of the best players in Europe. Despite a major recession going on buying players has never been so easy. Previous FM games would have seen fees of 32m for the likes of Dzeko, but licking the man’s arse on a regular basis and Wolfsburg’s financial trouble meant he arrived in Liverpool for 8m. High fives were dished out in droves that day. The only minor complaint I have is with the generic dialogue which hasn’t changed in about five years.

Tactical planning is the key
Training and tactics have been revamped for this release. You can now prepare your team for individual matches by drilling them in attacking play, defensive play, passing and attacking/defending set pieces. Also, you can now view (in bar chart format) how well your team is used to a tactic. Your team can be trained to play three different tactics although the more formations you choose to be familiar with have the less time they have becoming acquainted to each one so they can end up being a jack of all trades, but masters of none.

Set pieces can now be setup in their very own program that has been incorporated into the tactics creator. Although it makes the process easier it only serves that purpose. The same positions and instructions remain so there is little innovation in this area of the game. Training also has some minor improvements, but nothing drastic. Players can be trained in individual stats and goalkeeping coaching is now divided into handling and shot stopping, but training still remains one of FM’s most underdeveloped features.

A sign of life
SI took pride of its improved 3D match engine (if the numerous previews were anything to go by). The developer seemed to be bursting with pride as they showed off the new animations, especially the new celebrations. Now, while it’s nice to see some development on the 3D match engine these celebrations are cringe worthy. They’re usually the sort of crap you’ll see down the park on a Sunday with most of them 20 years out of date. Not only that, but the animation doesn’t quite work and end up with players finishing their lame celebrations and gliding across the pitch to kick off.

The engine does have some improvements though. Teams are no longer playing their games in limbo. Gone is the grassy emptiness outside the stadium replaced by a sprawling urban setting complete with corner shops. The atmosphere and sound remain decent, but sometimes lack the intensity it needs. The passion seems to be missing from most supporters. They don’t spur their team on or applaud excellent play, the whole experience seems mundane to them.

Sports Interactive could have been accused of leaving the series go stale with the last number of releases that really only felt like database updates, but it really has raised the bar with FM11. It’s the best release the series has had in years.