[FM 2011] Football Manager 2011 Preview - by IGN

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Backroom tweaks make for what could be the best FM yet.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/111/1112207p1.html

Earlier this week, a few of the new features we can expect to see in this year's Football Manager were announced. The most trumpeted addition was the sexy-sounding 'dynamic league reputation' - apparently the most requested feature from the series' hardcore community. Also in for an overhaul is the training system, contract negotiations and the 3-D match engine, and hundreds of other new features are also being drafted in.

But - to coin a football cliche or two - on paper these new signings don't exactly set the pulse racing. According to Sports Interactive studio director Miles Jacobson, however, this is set to be one of the most comprehensive FM updates so far.

"We had too much new stuff to announce in one press release," he told IGN, "my first draft was about five pages. But there's always far too much stuff; we have 400 new features in the game this year but there are another 1400 in the database that we haven't been able to use yet. It's not that difficult to make an annual iteration when you have so many great ideas for additions."



Like the FM community, the update Jacobson is most keen to trumpet is the dynamic league reputation. But why is it so exciting, and what does the phrase actually mean?

"In previous Football Managers", explains Jacobson "no matter how well you did with a team, if you were in a league with a poor reputation, there would always be players who wouldn't consider moving to your club.

"We looked at the big-name players who were now moving to the Russian league, teams in the Middle East and the MLS, and realised this was just unrealistic. Who would have thought until recently that Thierry Henry and David Beckham would now be playing in the USA? If you look at the Scottish leagues on the other hand, you'll see that the opposite is happening.

"So this new feature reflects that different countries go in and out of football fashion. Now if you do really well, or a club in your league does really well, the reputation of that league in the eyes of the world goes up. This is very important for a proper, long-term simulation of the global football world and will make a real difference to those who play for five or ten seasons."

Another aspect of FM that Jacobson admitted was in need of an overhaul was the player training, which many players simply didn't bother with.

"This year we actually took the time to sit down and really assimilate all the ideas that came into the forums about training," he said. The result is the new 'Match Preparation' training sessions, which allow managers to give their team specific goals to focus on in the build-up to a match.

He explains: "If you play the way I do as Watford, I like to buy lots of players all the time. However until those players start to gel you won't play well. Now you can get your players before a match to train at blending as a team. Another example; let's say your team has a difficult away match coming up where they're expected to be on the back foot. You can concentrate them on defensive play in preparation.

"We know that people play the game in different ways and for some people training is not something they bother with - but we hope this makes it more useful and relevant this time around."

From this year managers will also have the dubious pleasure of dealing with the most loathed members of the football fraternity - agents. It's the result of an overhaul of the transfer system that now lets you negotiate contracts with players in real time.



"I've spent a lot of time talking to chief executives and agents," explains Jacobson. "They basically told us exactly how transfers and contract negotiations really work and that resulted in us changing the way you offer player contracts in the game."

"Previously you would send out a fax to a player offering personal terms, who would come back a couple of days later if he wanted any changes. Now we have the equivalent of actually sitting in a room with a player and his agent and negotiating everything live with them.

"As part of that we've added different agent types as well. Some agents might be cheeky and say 'let's have your best offer', some are more realistic and say: 'here is what we want, take it or leave it', others might try to bully you and ask for far higher wages, and so on. Believe us, this will be very realistic."

With even more jobs on the managerial 'to-do' list this year, does Jacobson think that FM11 will be even less accusable to newbies than previous versions?

"We work very hard on the interface every year to make it as easy to play as possible, but FM will always be a simulation and not a 'game'. I think we do have the balance right. We still seem to sell the odd copy every year!"