Are you new to Football Manager and want to get better at Football Manager 2024? We have collected the best Football Manager tips to skyrocket your knowledge about FM24 & FM25!
From general advices about who to manage on Football Manager, what formations to use to set your club up for success, to useful training and scouting tips that enables you to find wonderkids we continue our attention at getting more players hooked on our favorite game by sharing our definitive list of FM24 tips and tricks.
Earlier we have shared with you our best clubs to manage for Football Manager and provided you with a range of Football Manager beginners guides that covers everything from starting a new save to more detailed guides about scouting in Football Manager.
This time we address all of you who have just started out playing Football Manager 2024 or FM25 and doesn’t quite know where to start or what to do in the first season of FM24 / FM25 as we give you our best tips to master Football Manager 2024.
Key Takeaways
Essential Football Manager 2024 Beginner Tips & Tricks to Elevate Your Game
As a newcomer to the Football Manager series, loading up and starting a new save can be an overwhelming experience. Packed with hundreds of features and with multiple layers of information and data, we understand Football Manager isn’t the easiest game to come to grips with.
It takes time to understand how to play the game and set your club up for success!
With so many things to do and major and minor decisions to make on a daily basis within Football Manager 2024 and so many possibilities provided to you at the start of a new game, it can be difficult to know where to start.
Which buttons to click, which formation to use, which training sessions should you use or what can you delegate to your staff are all arising questions as head into the game for the first time.
Bombarded with decisions you have to make that can make or break the season, playing Football Manager 2024 for the first time can be quite an overwhelming feeling.
To help you to quickly enhance your knowledge about Football Manager, we asked our X Community about their best tips to master Football Manager 2024 and they didn’t disappoint us! A huge range of passionate fans with many years of experience playing Football Manager took the time to provide their best beginner tips for Football Manager.
Coupled with my personal tips and tricks from over twenty years of playing the game and other general advices on how to get better at Football Manager and the must-know Football Manager tips to master the game send in by the FM Community, we give you the most essential tips and tricks to level up your FM knowledge & improve your overall enjoyment.
So, for all of you who doesn’t quite know where to start your Football Manager career we have collected this comprehensive list of the most essential Football Manager tips so you can quickly evolve from a beginner to pro at Football Manager!
Find more enjoyment in your first save on Football Manager 2024, or FM25, as we bring you some of the best beginners tips for Football Manager to elevate your game!
1. Selecting The Club to Manage
When starting out on Football Manager for the first time one of the best advices we can give is to start off with a team you support. Taking charge of a club you know the players of, has many advantages.
Not only will you be able to get a quicker understanding of the team’s best formation but as a supporter of the club you know more about the players strengths and weaknesses which may help to set up the appropriate player roles and tactical style that suits your chosen team.
Frankly, you can use your knowledge about the team’s playing style and the football philosophy by the manager you replace to assess the current abilities of the squad and what type of football they are most likely to be adept at playing, whether it may be playing a counter-pressing system at Liverpool, or a more traditional 4-3-3 formation based on possession football if you take charge of Barcelona.
When managing a team you know, you will also most likely have a better insight to the players within the league and the opponents around you – making it easier both in regard to signing players or preparing for the next opposition.
RELATED | Football Manager 25 Teams to Manage
In addition, managing a bigger club with an higher reputation and a bigger transfer budget will be more or less easier than managing a team either fighting in the relegation zone or are based in the lower leagues.
However, just remember that with bigger clubs comes higher expectations. If you doesn’t reach the club’s objectives and goals, as detailed in the Club Vision, or you end up on a loosing streak, you might get both the board, the players and the journalists against you making your coaching career twice as hard as when you are winning matches.
Whether you enjoy managing a big club or your local club is solely up to you. In the end, it will be a matter of weighting up less expectations over your coaching career right from the start over increased freedom to sign the players you want.
By JustMike
Play it how you enjoy it! There is no ‘right way’ or ‘wrong way’ to play the game. Start with a familiar team to learn the ropes and be patient with yourself with each feature as you learn!
By Sam, Absolute Football
Start an easy save with top teams as you learn more and more about the game you can pick teams in lower divisions.
Jantadas SEP
1.2 Boost Your Club’s Scouting Knowledge
If you want to sign players from a specific country outside the nation you control a club in, I have a clever trick for you. When entering a club, its world knowledge is based upon the staff at your disposal, so in order to boost your club’s scouting knowledge of foreign nations and regions, I always choose a different nation of origin when creating my Manager Profile.
For instance, Brazil is one of the nations with the best youth production in Football Manager according to the nation’s youth rating, so in order to increase the knowledge of Brazilian wonderkids and talents, you can select Brazil as your country of origin.
1.3 Save Team Selections
To round off this section looking at beginners tips once entering a new club comes a little squad management trick. After analyzing the squad you might have received a greater knowledge of who should be featured in your starting XI, and who might lack the ability to compete with a first team place.
To save both time at selecting the best XI for the most important matches, or to give valuable rest to your best players at less important matches, you can take advantage of quick picks!
Saving the team selections of your Starting XI for First and Second team will come in handy. Not only can you easily flick between the squads depending on how you rate your opponent, but you can also give game time to your most talented youngsters at cup matches.
In the Squad Overview simply click the Quick Pick button, hover the mouse cursor over to Manage and save your teams. I always have a quick pick team selection of my Best XI – featuring the best players in each position according to the players I prefer using at high level matches, and a Second team featuring backup players and breakthrough prospects that might sit on the bench or be outside the starting line-up of the main team.
These team selections will be stored and can easily be flicked between ahead of any new matches. Then, you can get Squad Selection Advices from your Assistant Manager and common sense to pick your line-up if struggling with injuries at certain positions within those quick pick teams.
These team selections will be essential within the pre-season period where you are required to give all the players within your first team enough match minutes to improve their fitness level and match sharpness. You can learn more about how to approach pre-season training on Football Manager in this guide.
The Best FM24 Tips & Tricks Relating to Tactics Creation
2. Choosing a tactic (that fits your team)
In Football Manager what tactic and formation you choose will have a widereach affect on your career throughout all the departments of the club from scouting to training. Frankly, it’s an important decision to get right and something you shouldn’t take lightly.
Our Football Manager tips in the matter of choosing a tactic on Football Manager are;
2.1 Select a recommended tactical template
In Football Manager you will have 10 different tactical templates to choose from which varies from more defensive tactical styles to more possession-based philosophies. You can choose between more modern counter-pressing football philosophies or go with a more pragmatic Catenaccio style that looks to nullify the opposition with a more structured defensive approach compared to the free-flowing and fluid football within a Tiki-Taka tactic.
For a newcomer, all this might be totally new to you and requires time to understand.
However, when choosing the team’s style of play and the football philosophy you prefer to establish you can come a long way by considerating tactical styles your assistant manager believes is well-fitted to the current players within your squad.
When creating a new tactic, simply look for the “thumbs up” icon on each of the tactical styles and formations. Your assistant manager will recommend three different tactical styles that fits your current team based on the players’ positional abilities and overall capabilities relating to strengths and weaknesses within the squad report and the most purposeful formation for each recommended playing style.
Choosing a preset tactic and formation provides you with a great starting point which you can use for the first few months within your save until you have familiarized yourself with the team and how the different instructions within tactics creation in Football Manager works.
Another thing to think about is what playing styles is favoured within your league.
Throughout the world, certain nations have specific tactical styles that most teams favour. In Germany, the Gegenpressing or counter-pressing tactical style which relies on an aggressive press and trying to win back the ball as soon as its lost is trending – often with a back three.
This means that any possession tactic with a lone striker (e.g. the 4-3-3) may not be as effective when coming up against a superior team who constantely press the back line when building out from the back. It’s something to be aware of and which you can consider if creating a 4-3-3 Tiki-Taka tactic. You need numerical superiority and good ball-plying defenders with composure and anticipation to beat the press.
2.2 Using preset tactics & well-known formations
The tactical templates aka preset tactics gives you a great foundation to assist you when setting up your tactics. While you are free to use those given tactical templates as a foundation for the way you want to play, using the Football Manager preset tactics has an advantage many overlook.
The preset tactics in Football Manager is based upon simplisity and balance.
Each tactical template comes with a set of team instructions and player roles instructions geared towards a certain style of play. With a limited number of instructions and appropriate player roles and duties to provide a balance between attacking and defensive risk, these tactical templates provides a great foundation to better understand what is going on with the chosen instructions.
Rather than picking haphazardly between the different instructions within each phases of play, without consideration or planning, you can use the tactical templates to fine-tune your tactics by making subtle changes to player roles and duties, team and player instructions to try to get the best out of your players as you advance in the game.
At this early stage you need to be patient and take time understanding what each of the team instructions do and pay attention to the movement patterns and behaviour of each of the player roles to get a better grasp of all the matters relating to tactics creation on Football Manager.
In this way, the preset tactics can be a wonderful solution as they are all designed to work right out of the box. You can call them plug and play tactics that requires very little adjustments to produce good results.
Playing style is more important than formation.
T.E.R Johnsen
2.4 Tactical Familiarity
By choosing a formation and tactical style recommended to you, you will take an easier route to future success.
One of the reasons is simply about what it takes for your team to adapt to your tactics. With a lower tactical familiarity, it will take longer for the team to play to their full potential. By using a tactic and tactical style that the team has a high level of familiarity of, the team can perform better earlier.
You can learn more about what affects the different tactical familiarity levels and how to maximize it in this comprehensive guide.
By choosing a tactical template and formation recommended to you, the tactical familiarity levels will be higher right from the start – meaning the team doesn’t need to spend as much time on the training ground to getting used to the tactics and football philosophy you are trying to incorporate.
Pay attention to the Tactical Familiarity Levels and try to choose team instructions that the team is accomplished in, or preferably is Fluid in.
Lower levels of familiarity will have a greater effect on the team’s performances which relies to everything from player’s positioning on the pitch in all phases of play to how they react to unfolding events.
3. What Formation to Use?
One of the most significant decisions you have to make besides deciding on your preferred tactics is to decide what formation to use. Your preferred tactical shape and how you distribute the players on the field can either make or break your first season.
Every team in Football Manager has different preferred formations that relies to their past experience and capabilities within both your squad and the coaching staff.
Both teams and players will have a greater understanding and tactical knowledge of certain formations. Rather than set yourself up to fail, you will come a long way in Football Manager by using one of the tried and tested formations.
Although there isn’t such a thing as a the best formation as each shape has it’s strengths and weaknesses when comping up against eachother, using one of the traditional formations such as a 4-3-3 shape or a 4-2-3-1 shape can help you come a long way.
The 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 tactics are one of the most used formations these days, with good reasons.
Then, you also got the 5-3-2 or the 3-4-2-1 which is currently trending after the success of Ruben Amorim at Sporting CP and Mikel Arteta’s unbeaten Bayer 04 Leverkusen of 23/24 season.
In fact, most players these days have a basic understanding of playing with a back four tactics and both formations provides both width and opportunities to outnumber the opposition in the attacking phase whilst also being rather defensive solid as you can defend with a 4-5-1 or a 4-1-4-1 shape out of possession.
By KejinFM
4. Keep it simple!
One of the overarching principles when creating tactics on Football Manager is to keep it simple!
Remember that the more instructions you add, the more you demand of your players which can have a groundbreaking affect in your team’s on-pitch performances.
Just imagine, if you are expected to fulfill several different job duties at once.
Your overall effectiveness would suffer, right?!
The same applies to your players. So rather than asking your players to both work the ball into the box, overlap down both flanks, play with a higher tempo and pass the ball into space, you’ll have more success by keeping yourself to the mantra “less is more”!
Try out formations and different player roles, don’t put too many instructions on your tactics and just learn from what happens. You don’t have to be CL winner with some mid level club in your save’s second season
Wins & Ties
Then as you familarize yourself to your team and get better at Football Manager, you can slowly and steadily adapt your tactics and add purposefully instructions that fits your football philosophy based on your players capabilities.
FYI! The traditional beginner tip of keeping things simple relies to every department on Football Manager, not just tactics and tactics creation.
Be patient. You won’t like the game right away. You’ll slowly but steadily understand the game over time.
By Real Talk Manchester City
4.1 Be Patient! Stick to your tactics!
Tactics is a huge part of Football Manager and when struggling with the team’s performances and results it’s easy to think it’s something wrong with the tactics. Perhaps you’ve heard “it’s your tactics” when asking for help to fix your save?
However, when starting out with a new career we can’t stress enough how important it is to be patient.
Although, Football Manager enables you to channel your inner Pep Guardiola and you feel the need to revolutionize your tactics against any new opponent according to pre-match tactical analysis, you will be better off giving your players time to get accustomed to the tactics.
Don’t read too much in to your pre season results. You could lose every game but still mount a good league campaign. Use them for tactical familiarity and squad fitness, rotate your options to get everyone sharp and bed in new signings
KhaosCentral
As a rule of thumb, you should not use pre-season matches to judge your tactics nor make changes to the tactics for every game.
A huge mistake I’m sure we have all done is to make subtle changes to the player’s positioning, player roles, duties or team instructions. We add or remove team or player instructions when things aren’t going our way, without considering the long-term effect. Or, move from Cautious to Attacking match mentality depending on the opponent according to your assistant managers feedback in pre-match
But be aware!
When making constant changes to your tactics the tactical familiarity will never reach fluid. Suddenly you have gone through the entire season without the players hasn’t become fully accustomed to your tactics and therefore you haven’t seen the full potential of your tactics!
If you’re not getting results, don’t rip up your tactic completely. Sometimes just one or two tweaks are all that is needed for your team to start performing again. Oh, and tackle harder, always.
GG513
Rather than changing your tactics mentality, formation and team instructions, which influences on the team’s tactical familiarity, it’s safer to make subtle changes like editing the player roles or duties if you’re struggling to create chances, score goals or set up an appropriate defensive block that doesn’t concede goals.
Changing player roles or duties will have less of an impact on the tactical familiarity than changing the tactical style and shape as the formation and tactical style is the same!
Personally, I would recommend to give your tactics time and use it for 5 to 7 matches before making the decision to change your tactic. After playing at least three matches you’ll be in a better position to analyze the performance of the team through reports and visualisations gather by the Performance Analysts and delivered in the Data Hub for you to digest.
Avoiding the urges of changing your formation and tactics every time the results go against you is a mistake every FM Veteran has done but instead of changing it for every time, give it a little time to see how it goes and remember that the level of team morale can have as much influence on the results as your tactics.
If the team is underachieving after the tactic has become fluid, you could slightly thinker with it to see if performance betters. For instance, if you concede a lot of goals, dropping the defensive line from high to standard could do the trick. Or, if you are struggling to come to goalscoring opportunities when playing a Tiki-Taka tactical style, remove ‘Work ball into the box’ and/or add ‘Be More Expressive’.
5. Don’t play players out of position!
When setting up your starting XI or searching for players to improve your squad, you will come a long way by simply using, or buying, players who are natural at playing in the chosen positions within your formation and tactics.
In Football Manager, all players have certain positional abilities where they are more or less adept playing in. A players’ positional abilities will vary from natural (most comfortable) to awkward if he has some kind of knowledge of the position.
While it might sound rather self-explanatory, playing players out of position can lead to disastrous results. Rather than feeling tempted by moving a forward into the backline if an injury crisis occurs, or believing you can retrain your creative striker into a ball-playing central defender, you should always try to avoid playing players out of position.
Now these examples are extreme – but you get the point.
Unless you have identified a versatile player who got the capabilities to quickly adept to a new position and got the competence to make an impact in all phases of play as he both have decent levels of defensive and attacking skills, moving a player out of position can really hurt the overall team’s performances and the overall ambitions to reach the club’s objectives.
Instead, pay attention to the player’s attributes and competence in each position when setting up your formation and tactics at the start of your save, or take it into account when choosing your first starting XI.
However, no rules without exceptions!
Retraining Players
As we’ve seen in the past you can have great effect from re-training players into a position that is closely linked to his natural position. For years we’ve seen players being re-trained into a new position once a new manager enters or the manager tries to evolve his tactics.
Strikers can be converted into Inside Forwards. Defensive midfielders into Inverted wingbacks or Wingers retrained into complete wingbacks.
A pattern occurs here! All players are asked to do somehow the same thing in possession of the ball as they did when playing in their natural position. This means you’ll have a great effect of retraining a centre back into a defensive midfielder or vice versa as he is asked to play in a similar manner when the team is out of possession.
As recommended by Maddux aka GRMFM on X, retraining a player to a new position is easy and you can often find bargain players that just need to be retrained.
When searching for players who can be retrained, you must look for players with an high Versatility. This is an hidden attribute in Football Manager which will limit the players availability to be retrained into a new position. A lower versatility makes retraining harder as he might be limited to be playing in only two positions compared to others who can play in 5 or more positions.
Retraining players is a long-term process. It’s not done in a few days. For those with no knowledge in a position, it may take months or even seasons to complete. Others may realize along the way that they will never get accustomed to playing in the new position.
In the process, you will discover that individual position training will be helpful but it will only take the player so far! Along with position training, playtime and match minutes in the position he should learn is most important.
…and the same applies to player roles
Regardless of how much you desire to fit a certain player into your tactical system, you have to realize that some players will perform better in specific roles compared to others.
In Football Manager each player will have a star rating for each of the player roles they are capable of. How good the player is in the role depends on his level of player attributes, preferred foot and natural positional abilities.
Some roles, such as the Trequartista, False 9, Raumdeuter or the Roaming playmaker role – all those specialist player roles, requires experience, which comes with age and game time.
Even though the player might have a similar star rating in several different player roles, you will come to realize that the players might perform better or worse in one role compared to another.
Attributes ranging between 12-15 doesn’t mean a player is bad. That is above average and if it’s better than most in those positions in rival teams, then you’re going to do well if signing that person.
Beardy
By focusing on and highlighting the key attributes for the role and his preferred foot relating to his position, you can quickly identify a player’s best player role, or you can also look at the player report card and browse through the positions he is natural in and identify his best role(s).
A subtle weakness in one area of the player’s skills might have a small knock-on effect on his performances.
This was a hard tought lesson for me in my Crewe save where I used Iwan Morgan in the Pressing Forward role where he slightly underperformed and couldn’t score. As soon as I changed the role to Advanced Forward he scored a hat-trick. This happened time and time again!
To learn about the player’s best role you can look at the player’s performances over a few matches and see how he does. Or, you can go to the Development tab and locate an individual player’s Tactical Familiarity to see if he’s used to the chosen tactical instructions.
Simply browse through the different player roles for his position and notice how the bar relating Position/Rule/Duty changes.
All this information can be used when creating a new tactic or when choosing player roles and duties for your tactical system.
That way, you are more likely to get the best out of the player and you are one step closer to on-pitch success.
5.1 Tactical Analysis: The Influence of Player Roles & Duty In Your Tactics
The most creative ones of you might enjoy creating assymetric tactics that position the player on the pitch quite different than the traditional 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 formations. Regardless of what formations you create, you can use the Influence heat map to discover areas of the pitch you might struggle in.
It might be specific zones on the pitch that your team might be weak in due to what type of player roles you use, the player’s familarity with the role and position, or how the player connects to other players in the pitch.
By clicking on the ‘Analysis’ button within the Tactics screen, you’ll get a complete overview of a player’s positive or negative influence on the team. With its color-coded heat map of strong or weak influence, you’ll be able to click on each of the 31 zones of the football pitch to discover how well suited the player is to play in his chosen position, role and duty.
A light green zone means that the player responsible for this area of the pitch is well suited to his tactical role and duty, and that there are no weaknesses between his role and duty and the other roles around him.
If discovering any dark red areas, you know there are serious issues with your tactics that the opposition may exploit. Then, you might discover green zones with a red circle within it. This will notify you of other minor problems. A subtle change in a player’s duty might therefore be necessary to get a better defensive or attacking cover on the pitch.
By moving through the different zones of the pitch with the chosen player roles can also give you a better insight into how the player role will behave and where he will move once the team is in- or out of possession.
For instance, when clicking on the AMR zone with three light green dots, I get the feedback:
“Ximo Navarro (DR) will occasionally use his wing back duties to push further forward in an effort to influence the play in a more advanced territory” meanwhile the AMRC “Diego Villares is able to help out in this area of the pitch from time to time“, which is an encouraging sign on how strong the player’s influence in this area of the pitch is to creating overloads and help eachother to be more defensive solid and come to chances.
6. Don’t Neglect the Power of Opposition Instructions
The Best Football Manager Tips Relating to Squad Dynamics
In your quest to on-pitch success it’s not enough to have the very best Football Manager tactics. Even the best managers need to spend as much time on squad- and man-management as preparing the players for the next opposition by setting up appropriate training schedules.
In Football Manager, how you treat your players, their relationships and partnerships and whether you’re able to keep your players happy, or not, will have a huge affect on the team’s performances.
Luckily, we got the Squad Dynamics on Football Manager to monitor all the different matters relating to player’s dynamics.
Here you’ll get a wonderful insight to the overall happiness within your squad, the relationships between your players and other off-pitch factors that can limit the chance of getting the very best out of your squad.
Apart from learning about who the most influentual players within your squad are, the hierarchy between players and wether there are fractions within the squad socially that might affect the overall dressing room atmosphere, and the player’s opinion of your management, the Squad Dynamics provides all sorts of valueable insight to issues that may erupt and become a huge problem down the line.
To avoid any unhappiness spreading amongst your players or resolve any rising conflicts, or generally help the players to maintain good morale – something that is crucial in your title ambitions – you’ll find it useful to visit the Happiness screen within Dynamics section from time to time.
The Happiness screen gives you an overview of how satisfied all the individual player’s within your first team squad are. It can alert you of arising problems before they become a major issue, help you to address concerns about training and its intensity, concerns about your treatment of other players or other topics relating to their overall happiness.
The knowledge and information you receive of the players overall happiness can help you to give you the feedback you need to make changes to how you approach things. Perhaps you need to invite a player to a private chat to talk about concerns of playing time or other topics that makes the player unhappy or disgrunted with the situation at the club.
7. Keep your Team Leaders & Most Influentual Players Happy!
As a rule of thumb, you should always try to keep your team leaders and most influentual player happy. How you treat your players, what you say to them, what you promise them of game time and how you praise or criticize all your players can affect whether they will support or oppose you.
Coming up against the club’s most influential players can quickly become the mistake you will always regret.
This means youshould think twice to criticize the performance of the players higher up in the squad hierarchy and ensure the players receives the agreed playing time.
The squad hierarchy gives you a valueable insight into fractions within your squad and players that might oppose you.
Are there any players you want to win over to your side or what would happen if you transfer list or sell an influentual player? These are all subjects to think about in all matters relating to squad building and man-management.
Morale is everything, a team with good morale can win impossible game, even if the tactic isn’t Guardiola level. Don’t buy players just because they are good, but find players that fit your playing style.
Vladdmir22
7.1 Prioritize Increasing Team Cohesion
The Team Cohesion is a visual representation of the team’s collective mental state of mind and the cohesion of the players. The level of team cohesion will have a dramatic effect on the team’s performance as it will affect everything from the player’s understanding of their positioning on the pitch in relationship to the others, their vision and reactions to unfolding events.
Earlier we mentioned that it’s easy to blame the tactics when things aren’t going well but the level of team cohesion could easily be the answer too.
The team cohesion will be influenced by how long the players have trained and played together. The longer, the better the team cohesion.
When starting a new save, how well the players are gelled together is oftenly poor or abysmal. Perhaps the team have made a huge number of signings within the summer transfer window and the understanding among the players are lacking both tactically and socially.
Now we can’t underestimate the effect of a team that has played together for a long time. Just think about some of the greatest football teams throughout the history. Most of them featured players who had played together for a long time and thereby was playing like a cohorent unit.
Before you can judge your tactics, you should prioritize increasing the team cohesion.
The job starts at day one by trying to make all the individual players within your team into a unit that wins and losses together.
In Football Manager there are three ways to improve the team cohesion.
- Playing Matches
The more matches the players play together, the better the team cohesion will be over a longer time period. - Set up appropriate training schedules that looks to improve player’s Teamwork and Team Cohesion by adding certain training sessions.
In every week your training schedules should look to include either a Match Practice session and/or an Extra-Curricular such as Team Bonding session. It greatly influences both player’s happiness and team cohesion – a win win situation!
Even the extra-curricular training session Community Outreach will slightly increase the team cohesion. - In competitive gameweeks you should always apply a Match Review training session the day after the match. At the same time, you can increase the team cohesion by applying a Match Tactics session the day before the match.
This means you have to make manually adjustments to your training schedules as your assistant manager might not have found place for these valueable training sessions that greatly affects team cohesion.
Try to fit as many match practices into your training as you can, as well as having a team bonding session every week. That way you can maximise both development and happiness/cohesion
John Wood
In fact, we have created a training schedules megapack for Football Manager 2024 that includes a Teamwork training schedule which you can download and integrate to your team.
I use this training schedule the week before the first competitive match as well as in every situation where the team cohesion is low. It might be used if you have made multiple signings in a short space of time, or if there are other drastic changes to the squad that affects the squad’s team cohesion negatively.
7.2 Improve the Team’s Morale!
In Football Manager, just like in the real life, a loss can easily ruin the team spirit you’ve worked so hard to build up as it might be the first step on a downward spiral. A second loss can quickly send your team on a loosing streak that’s ‘impossible’ to get out.
Just look at Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City where each loss drops the players morale and confidence to a level that makes the job of managing even the best club in the world into a nightmare!
This is something even the most experienced armchair managers knows to well!
A happy squad will perform better on the pitch while a squad with poor morale will struggle no matter how good your tactics are.
FMNatics – 7 Game-Changing Tips for Football Manager
As you hunt for success, overlooking the affect of the teams morale on the player’s performances will be a huge mistake. If you want to win more matches on Football Manager spending your efforts at maintaining or improving the team’s morale will be crucial.
The best manager’s is not only great at man management but brilliant at getting the very best out of their players by building up their confidence, keeping them happy and ensuring their mental state of mind is positive.
To be more successful on Football Manager you need to prioritize all your efforts at either maintaining or improving the team’s morale in every way possible as poor morale can spread throughout your squad like a virus.
Managing the player’s morale is just one of the secrets behind a successful team. Most often it’s as much about controlling the level of morale by maintaining it, as being hands-on and take care of any potential issues before they turn into more devastating problems that will take weeks or months to un-do.
How to improve player’s morale and happiness on Football Manager by Passion4FM
As we mention in our guide on how to improve player’s morale and happiness there are several things to do to ensure the team morale is high, apart from winning matches. Below we’ll show you some of the methods to build up player’s morale.
7.2.1 Go easy on your players at losses against better opponents!
Every loss has the potential to unsettle the players and drop their morale one nudge at a time. As one loss can easily become a loosing streak that gets both your club’s fans, your board and your players against you, you should take every measures to ensure the team morale doesn’t drop further.
What you say at team talks, in press conferences and team meetings can have a devastating affect on the player’s morale. Rather than criticizing the players at every match your team doesn’t win you should consider who you are up against, whether you play home or away, and what was expected by the pundits. Finally, how you lost the game is also something you should keep in mind as you talk to the players after the match.
If you’re facing one of the top 5 clubs whilst you are expected to finish in the relegation zone, it’s better to tell your players to not worry about the result and look forward rather than raging and throwing water bottles around in the dressing room.
It all depends on their performances relating to the result.
Perhaps you’ve just witness your team playing beautiful attacking football with lots of chances but inability to find the net. Despite dominating the match, the opposition scores two goals from quick counters or at dead ball situations such as corners.
In these circumstances, it’s nothing wrong to tell the player’s how unlucky they were.
However, don’t be repetitive at team talks either. Eventually, what you’ll say will loose its effect and you end up in a situation where the players won’t react (positive or negative) to your feedback.
Always consider what was represented on the pitch before deciding on your team talks. Consider match stats, individual performances and the score line, along with how you perceived the match.
When you understand how to use team talks to improve players morale, you can better pick up your players after a poor loss or a devastating draw.
Enjoy the journey and don’t get too wrapt up in the wins and losses but realise there are ebbs and flows to a season. Keep morale up as much as you can too.
Mitch Dabb
7.2.2 Praise or Criticize Players’ Training Performance
Praising, or criticizing player’s training performance can be an quick and easy way to improve player’s morale. Talking to the players about what you demand and expect from them at the training ground through private chats should be done regularly.
To help you identify players’ training rating you can ask your assistant manager to send you a review of the weekly training with a quick list of best and worse performers.
To enable this for your youth teams, head to the Staff Responsibility screen. Locate Training and enable “Receive training emails for First Team Squad/Reserves and U18s”.
Praise any players with an higher training rating than 7.8 on a monthly basis and criticize those players with a training rating of under 6.5.
If the training has been abysmal warn the player about his poor training performance in a private chat and tell him that he needs to step it up if he shall have any chance of playing regularly.
Perhaps you can encourage the player to step up his training performances by setting some training targets? Just be aware that don’t promise anything you can’t keep – otherwise the relationship may be ruined and the player may become unhappy with the treatment of him and cause further upsets to the dressing room atmosphere, as the player manage to get other players on his side to oppose you.
If players come to you wanting more playing time, tell them you cant offer it and say they will have to leave, 99% of the time they will be happy to stay. Promises are a pain Don’t hold team meetings unless you really have to – in which case use what’s agreed in club vision
FMullered
Getting one of the team leaders and the most influentual players within your squad against you can have a dramatic effect on the dressing room atmosphere and your chances to keep the job in this dramatic situation.
The Best Football Manager Match Day Tips!
8. Pick the right players!
No matter how you perceive Football Manager, it will always be a numbers game. Think of it as a huge spreadsheet where everything you do affects something else in the game.
In the game we are presented with current abilities, attributes and statistical data, which will have an influence over the player’s performances. These are all matters to consider when selecting the starting XI. However, with a congested fixture list and competitive matches often coming two times a week, picking the starting XI for the next match can become a difficult affair.
Although you may want to pick the very best players according to the ones who have the best statistical output, there are several things to consider before selecting your starting XI. Here’s a quick list of things to be aware of that can affect the player’s performances in the upcoming match.
A) Match Load & Player Condition
Before considering a player’s availability for the upcoming match you will need to take a risk assessment. Arising questions like will the player be fit to play? Have the player just come back from an injury and won’t likely tolerate 90 minutes of action, or is the upcoming fixture list heavy meaning you’ll be better off resting players against weaker opponents.
The intensity of both training and match load will influence on a player’s condition and thereby his fitness level for the upcoming match. Selecting a player with poor condition or who are starting to get tired due to a high match load and lots of kilometers totalled over a short time period will increase the risk of injuries.
B) Players Natural Fitness & Stamina
How much a player tolerates and how fast a player recovers from playing a match will depend on his Natural Fitness and stamina. A player with lower levels won’t tolerate as many matches in a short time period before getting fatigued. At the same time, once they are tired and their conditions are decreasing, the player’s won’t be able to play to their current ability. The knock-on effect is that a player’s attributes is slightly below his actual within the match engine as tiredness will affect both concentration, positioning, movement, decision-making, vision and awareness – all those mental attributes that affect the execution.
A tired player won’t be able to play to their actual player attributes resulting that a fresh player with 1 or 2 attributes below might be as good as an option as your tired key player.
C) Player’s Injury Susceptibility
Players with high injury susceptibility has an higher risk of getting injured. The more matches and minutes the player receives, the higher the likeliness of injuries. Although I avoid signing players with high injury susceptiblity, you might enter a new team where you have several players with above average injury susceptiblity where reccuring injuries will happen.
To avoid these players to get injured you need to balance their match load more than others. Perhaps you need to limit their game time to 60 minutes per match and reduce their training intensity to half as well as giving them an extra day of rest after matches.
NB! Players with high injury susceptibility also has poor levels of natural fitness.
D) The Hidden Attributes Consistency
Consistency is a hidden attribute that can really affect a players’ performance. An inconsistent player will struggle to play to their current ability level in every match and will vary their performance regardless of whether they are match fit.
The dilemma with inconsistent players are that you never know what to get from them. They can’t be trusted in the same manner as a consistent player who will perform more regularly to their average.
Make it into a habit to regularly visit the Medical Centre to assess players risk of injuries and potential to become fatigued. In this instance, you need a Sports Scientist in order to be provided with the player’s fatigue level within the Medical Centre.
In the Medical Centre you’ll be able to determine whether a players’ training intensity should be reduced, whether your tactic needs to be adjusted as the intensity of it increases the risk of injuries, or whether there are players who requires match minutes to improve their match sharpness.
Our Best Football Manager Tips Relating to Staff
9. Delegate, Delegate & Delegate | Staff Responsibilities
As a newcomer to Football Manager, it’s unreasonable to believe you can understand how Football Manager works in no time. As you get familiar with Football Manager, prioritizing what matters the most to you is essential to fully enjoy the game.
Rather than taking an all-hands approach, you will come a long way by delegating tasks where possible.
Your club’s staff is there for a reason.
Just like real life, your staff will feel valued and happier when being assigned to certain responsibilities that fits their competence.
Don’t touch anything until you’ve been on “Responsibilities” under the “Staff” tab. Choose what you want to manage within the save. Helps with workload and immersion at your own tempo, whilst also being able to hand pick the stuff you enjoy doing like transfers et
Andrew Broome
At the beginning of your Football Manager career, it might be purposeful to focus only on the next opposition and match results.
As a recurring theme when asking our Community about their best tips for beginners of Football Manager, delegating the staff responsibilities to the most suitable staff will help you to get better at Football Manager.
“Let your staff focus on things such as training and recruitment if you’re not comfortable with those, and just focus on your game and finding an identity. Rotate where possible, and don’t just rip up the plan entirely if you hit a bad run of form. Sometimes, one or two positional changes are all it takes. Most importantly, enjoy it and play the game however you like!”
By TractionFM
Personally, if I was just starting out playing Football Manager, I would delegate the responsibilities of Press Conferences and Training to the Assistant Manager. Then, you can delegate the control of handling outgoing transfers to your Director of Football, or ask your chief scout to handle scouting until you feel more comfortable taking charge.
At the same time, your Assistant Manager can also handle team talk and provide opposition instructions freeing up your time to focus on your team tactics and get the most out of your squad. This somehow reveals the importance of having a good Assistant Manager on Football Manager, as you can quickly and easily delegate all your responsibilities to him, if you want to!
Delegate as much as you can and pick up one aspect of the game at a time. Pick a mid table team in a league you know and just get a feel for the game. No shame in downloading a tactic, training schedules etc. just have fun with it and learn step by step!
By MooonoStreams
In our guide to staff responsibilities on Football Manager you can learn more about which tasks to delegate and to whom, and how to receive backroom advices about your team from your coaching staff.
10. Improve your coaching staff
Regardless of how you see your project as the newly appointed manager within your FM Career, there’s nothing more important than to spending time at improving your coaching staff!
Frankly, improving the team’s coaching staff is a long-term objective that never ends!
Whether you wish to establish a certain football philosophy at the club, or you are there just to win as many matches and trophies as possible, enhancing the quality of the club’s staff will be one of the hidden factors behind future success whether it’s improving the player’s on-pitch performances or developing your greatest talents from wonderkids to future world-class players and international stars.
In Football Manager, you can easily compare your current staff abilities and their overall qualities to the rest of your league – prodiving you a quick way to understand areas you need to improve if you wish to have the best coaching staff in your league.
As a rule of thumb, the more coaches you have of better quality, the better quality in training – something that may help the development of the players and understanding of key aspects of your tactical system.
Try to hire staff with the preferred formation as your tactics. If doing a save focusing on youth development prioritize signing staff with more than 15 in working with youngster attribute for improved youth training.
Andy the Mod
Recruiting staff with the appropriate staff attributes for their role and understanding which key attributes they need, should be spent time on immediately. In fact, it’s one of the top 10 duties at day one to complete before hitting the ‘Continue’ button for the first time!
Here are some quick links to learn more about what staff attributes to look for;
- how to find the best coaches on Football Manager
- how to find the best scouts in Football Manager
- Head of Youth Development – Football Manager Staff Role and Responsibilities
Patience is key, tough to win titles straight away!. Build year on year and get the best staff avaliable it helps massively.
KOP Connections
When improving your coaching staff on Football Manager do remember to sign staff with great Personality (e.g. Model Citizens, Perfectionist, Professional, Driven or Resolute, Model Citizens) and avoid those with a negative personality. Coaches’ personality will rub off onto the players – meaning their personality will be of higher importance for youth than first team members.
Football Manager’s Best Scouting Tips & Tricks
11. Scout by Attributes Not Star Ratings!
The art of scouting for players in Football Manager is essentially a topic on its own. However, there are several tips and tricks that could help you in the process of signing players that improve your team now or for the future.
One of the most basic tips we can offer is to not get blinded by star ratings!
Don’t use the star rating to pick your teams or transfer targets, look at the positions you need and their attributes!
Wroot1FM
The star ratings in Football Manager is basically a subjective opinion by the scout, or the assistant manager, that considers the average ability and potential of your current players within the position to try to calculate whether the player is better or worse the player’s within the squad.
The star ratings in Football Manager will take into account;
- players current ability (and potential)
- how well the player fits into your team according to pros and cons within the player/socut report card
- current form and training performance
- the accuracy of judgement by the assistant manager or the scout, and their knowledge of the player
- progress of players within your squad (which can reduce another players’ current ability)
As you discover, there are a number of factors that influence on the star rating and it’s a number of uncertainty factors influencing it.
Instead, you should focus on the player attributes, the hidden attributes and what the player is capable of, or not.
Rather than scouting for players with a current ability star rating of minimum 3 gold stars (which is around the squad’s average), you will find it more beneficial to scout by key attributes for the position and role.
Ignore star ratings for the most part. Look at players attributes more so that the overall stars.
The Flying Scotsman
If you’re in search for a wingback, you could emphasize physical attributes such as Stamina and quickness, mental attributes such as Off the ball movement, Work Rate and Decisions, as well as the technical attributes; Crossing, Tackling and ball control (Dribbling, Technique and First Touch).
Notice how many of these attributes may suit to describe wingers or other wide midfielders.
Scout by attributes but not by position.
by Maddux (GRMFM on X)
12. Watch Highlights of Players
When scouting for players and assessing their strengths and weaknesses the written scout report can only give you a brief insight into the players’ style of play and overall abilities. Although, you can track a players’ form by adding him to a shortlist, there is one hidden feature in Football Manager that will be essential in the final decision-making process when signing players.
In Football Manager you can ask your scouts to deliver highlight packages from matches the player has appeared in.
These highlight packes let you watch the player in action and therefore gives you additional information of the player’s performance, his playing style and how he has been used at the other club.
You’ll be able to see whether the player has a tendency to move with the ball and drive inside from the wing, how well he is on the ball, off the ball or generally behaves in the match.
With clips of the player in action, you’ll be in a better position to make the right decision. Use the visual representation of the player to assess his overall skills and compare how he performs on the pitch with other valuable information, such as personality, hidden attributes and other pros and cons of your future potential signings.
To receive highlight packages simply ask one of your scout to watch the player for a few matches.
Select Player > Reports > Assign Scout > Choose Scout > Choose For 2 Matches* (or more)
Once the highlight pack is ready, you can watch the highlight package from the all the matches the scout has attended by heading to the Scout Report within the player profile. Here you’ll get a visual overview of the matches they have watched and his performances within these matches along with the visual representation within the highlight package.
NB! Just remember that when asking your scouts to get scout reports of a player, or when watching matches, there might come an extra scout cost that will be deducted from the scouting budget, if the player is based outside the permitted scouting range.
You will get a pop up message for any individual scouting trips that cost money.
Your scouting budget will quickly decrease if you constantly send your scouts to watch players in action. Use this feature wisely!
Don’t go wild in the transfer window. It might seem like a great idea to sign 20 players but smaller changes work better.
DaveyFM
13. Find wonderkids gems by scouting Under-21 National Teams
When searching for and finding young talents with the potential to develop into wonderkids the key is to be clever. Think outside the box as you search for the next world-class players. Rather than setting up a number of recruitment focuses that aims to find wonderkids and talents across the world, cross your fingers and hope for the best, you will profit from spending a little effort.
There are several ways to find hidden wonderkids gems and talents with huge potential. In fact, as our FM24 wonderkids list shows, there are thousands of Under-21 players across the world with the potential to reach a top 5 leagues level.
In your quest to identify wonderkids and cheap talents, one beneficial strategy may be to browse the Under-21 National teams for cheap talents and hidden gems.
Pay attention to who has been called up to represent their Nation, scout and/or invite the most interesting players for a trial.
Although it requires a greater effort to visit the youth international teams, your time dedicated to manually scouting can really pay off.
Check all players being called up to the under-21 National teams, you can make some steals for even less than €1M!
Mendanrolle
Scouting youth national teams around international breaks can be a good way of finding wonderkids which your recruitment focuses might miss
TMounty90
In Football Manager there are certain nations you should prioritize your focus at as these countries has a better chance at producing the next generation of wonderkids. Below is a quick list of nations with the best youth rating, game importance and reputation.
| Nation | Youth Rating | Continent (Region) |
|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 163 | South America (South) |
| Germany | 155 | Central Europe |
| France | 155 | Western Europe |
| Spain | 145 | Western Europe |
| Italy | 144 | South Europe |
| Argentina | 140 | South America (South) |
| England | 135 | UK & Ireland |
| Portugal | 134 | Western Europe |
Apart from these countries, you will love the opportunity to find cheap wonderkids and talents with great potential popping up in Belgium, The Netherlands, Colombia, Serbia, Croatia and Türkiye.
However, depending on the nations you load when setting up your save and the database size, you can basically find wonderkids popping up anywhere in the world. Browsing the list of youth intake arrivals on a monthly basis from January to June can be useful.
13.1 Using Search Filters to Find Wonderkids
In your hunt for wonderkids and talents on Football Manager using search filters will deliver far better results than setting up recruitment focuses. At the moment, a recruitment focus is used to look for players that can improve the first team. It doesn’t take into account the abilities nor potential of the players within your youth teams meaning that the scout may overlook young talents that could be useful as they judge their abilities and potential according to players in the same position within the first team.
Search filters enables you to identify more players but could be a costly affair as getting scout reports of players outside your scouting range will deduct money from the scouting budget. At the same time, these recruitment focuses may take weeks and months to deliver results. If you’re fortunate, you’ll end up with less than 50 recommended potential targets after a year of ongoing scouting.
Once the initial scouting budget is used, you won’t be able to send your scouts out on assignment as you won’t afford a scouting range. To save both money and time, search filters can do the trick!
In the players in range section, you can sort by players age to reduce the number of players available to browse through.
Set up a search filter with a maximum age of 21, pick attributes like Determination, Natural Fitness and Work Rate to identify young players who can progress greatly in training and withstand an higher training load.
Then you can filter by maximum transfer value to identify affordable signings, or use a broad search filter that enables you to keep track of potential future signings by adding the players into a shortlist.
Keep in mind if ‘Interested in Transfer/Loan’ is ticked, the search result will be limited to players that might want to join your club. You can tick it off to see all players within the database size that match your filter, or only show players who are extremely interested in joining your club.
As you will discover, there are several useful conditions that may be used to restrict the number of players within the scouting pool.
Another benefit of using search filters to find wonderkids is that it isn’t limited by the scout’s knowledge, Adaptability and Determination which can affect which matches the scout watches and how he moves across the nation to identify potential signings.
Search filters can be a powerful way to identify potential wonderkids and talents.
Football Manager Recruitment Tips: Signing Players & Contract Negotiations
14. Plan for the future!
The squad planner in Football Manager can be a useful tool to identify positions you are weak in through the overview of the squad depth, or browse the next seasons to visualize how the squad may change according to contract expires, potential development of your best talents, or according to agreed playing time.
The squad planner will be a valuable tool when looking at how you can strengthen your squad. Use it to plan for the future by setting up appropriate recruitment focuses before the situation becomes dramatic.
Use the average ability star rating to identify positions you might need to improve or move players up or down the list of preferred players for a position without unsettling the player.
If your best players’ contracts are expiring 12 months into the future, it would be adviseable to plan for his departure just in case the contract negotiations breaks down. Use the squad planner to add best suited players for the position, players within shortlists or include youth talents to identify potential replacements.
For instance, the projection of Deportivo La Coruna’s squad for the second season and third season reveals that we will have a huge problem at the back ahead of us, with no players able to play at the DR position for the second season and no players in the entire back four for the third season.
To be one step ahead, it’s time to look for players between the age of 18 and 25 who can be great signings to make the promotions to La Liga.
15. Always Contact the Agents
Whenever you are signing new players or shall enter contract negotiations, it’s necessary to contact the agent to learn about his transfer and wage demands first!
By discussing the availability of the player, or a new contract, with the agent, you’ll avoid unhappiness or experiencing the contract negotiations breaking down before it really begins!
By contacting the agent first you’ll get to know whether the player is willing to sign the contract and what he demands without upsetting the player or the agent – avoiding you to ruin any future relationships that may be of benefit.
In fact, you’ll avoid come into a situation where you have to guess his wage demands, acceptable contract length or any contract clauses or bonuses are set to zero, as seen in the image below.
When talking to the agent about his availability you can use different tones to signal to the agent how interested you are in signing the player, from Very Interested to Curious.Sometimes you will find that if you take a more reserved approach, the agent will be as reserved and not give you any clues of what the demands are.
Then, as the talk goes proceeds you can contest any offer and try to reduce the wage demands into a more acceptable level according to your preferences of how valuable the player will be.
What about Contract Clauses & Bonuses to avoid or reduce?!
Once entering contract negotiations, there are several clauses and bonuses available that can help you strike a deal. Although you can use clauses and bonuses to reduce the initial wage demands, so the cost of the player is limited each month, there are certain contract clauses and bonuses that could take the overall cost of the player significantly higher than what you’ll imagine.
Personally, I always remove (or decrease as much as possible):
- Yearly Wage Rise
- Agent Fee
Below is some additional great tips By Football Manager Addict:
- Remove unused substitute fees (waste of money).
- Reduce appearance fee & instead increase goal/assist bonus.
- Add £0 relegation release fee to reduce wage demands (because if you get relegated, you’ll get sacked anyway!)
Instead, I prefer to increase the contract length rather than paying a huge fee for every match the player is sitting on the bench, or playing a match. An appearance fee of €1.6K will total to €80,000 if he plays 50 matches a season.
At the same time, a yearly wage rise of 10% will rise his €100K wages per week to €110K per week the following season. Just imagine if you have 30 players within your squad increasing their wages per week with 10% every year!
Remove all clauses in contracts especially the 10% year increase, add a couple of grand on the agent fee to keep them sweet
WayneSc
As FM Addicts recommends, increasing their assist or goal bonus can motivate the player to perform better – something that may help the club take the next step towards on-pitch success.
16. Identify Player’s on an Expiring Contract
When scouring the transfer market, look for players with 12 months left on contract and add to shortlist. Then as soon as end of December / start of January happens then browse the list of players to identify those players who hasn’t sealed a contract extension.
These players with only 6 months, or less, remaining in their contract will be available on an approach to sign! For a limited fee (often a compensation fee for Under-21s), or for no cost at all, you can negotiate the signing of these players which will happen once his contract expires.
That way you can easily improve your team with useful players on a free.
17. Hire Intermediates!
Are you or your Director of Football struggling to offload unwanted players and you want to make the process of selling players quicker, then hiring an intermediate can help you to sell those transfer listed players, or the ones who are attracting interest faster.
The Intermediate is a type of football agent, who will use his connections inside the global football circus to help out with the sale of the player for a small commission and thereby help you to improve your transfer budget within days rather than weeks.
By using the business connections and reputation an Intermediate has built up by working between clubs and agents over a longer time, these persons can for a percentage of the transfer fee help to monitor the transfer market and find suitable clubs that wish to buy your player.
Introduced to Football Manager 2024, Intermediates come in different staff with different scope. Some are working worldwide and has a high reputation and thereby greater connections to find a suitable move, whilst others are Regional Agents. Worldwide agents will most often demand an higher percentage of the transfer or loan fee but may let you experience offers coming in within days after hiring him compared to delegating the responsibility of the Director of Football to handle the sale, or by offering the player out at the TransferRoom.
Perhaps you’re fortunate to sell a player for an higher transfer fee than his current transfer value and thereby profit from the sale!
NB! When hiring an Intermediate, the player’s availability will be alerted to other clubs without unsettling the player.
18. Take Advantage of Your Director of Football when finding suitable tranfer targets
Do you struggle with signing players according to your limited budget? Perhaps you find it overwhelming to find suitable prospects that may be interested at joining your club? Fear not!
The club’s Director of Football can help help with all matters relating to signing players and negotiating contracts, as well being able to offloading players or finding Development Loans for your breakthrough youngsters.
In the matter of finding suitable signings, you can profit from the reputation and knowledge your Director of Football has. Simply head to Transfers and locate the Director of Football section and ask your DoF to suggest transfer targets.
You can ask him to suggest transfer targets for a specific position, and thereby whether you want to sign the player permanently, on loan, on a free transfer or at the end of his contract.
If there are suitable targets within the transfer market, the DoF will suggest three players that he may think is useful. Just be aware that he won’t take into account the transfer budget nor your club’s transfer policy or the players abilities or potential. As a result, it can be very hit or miss as he might suggest transfer targets that are way below your playing level, or that might be too expensive to afford.
What’s great with this feature is that you can request your DoF to suggest transfer targets for specific roles and according to his availability several times – resulting you can create a list of potential transfer targets which you can track the performance of, or ask your DoF to move ahead to initate a transfer offer by adding him /them as transfer targets.
The Director of Football will then work his way down the list depending on whether the transfer offer is accepted or declined.
Using the suggest transfer targets feature can be a tedicious affair that requires some attention regularly. It’s not like you will find great players immediately, but for a club with limited budget you may come to identify players that may not have come to attention to your scouts yet.
19. Profit from released players
Finally, a great tip when you’re looking for recruiting players on Football Manager is to take advantage of other clubs’ left overs. As mentioned earlier, it’s better to work smarter than harder.
If managing in the lower leagues or fighting a relegation battle you might profit in the long term by signing released players from clubs above you. You’ve probably heard the saying; “one persons leftovers can be another persons feast“. This can truly be a valueable approach to sign players on Football Manager.
Just imagine, if Manchester United, Real Madrid or Bayern Münich release some of the youngsters that didn’t got a renewed contract. Although they might not be the quality to reach the First Team of these top clubs, they may be useful prospects that can be sold for profit if playing in the English second division, at the bottom of the Portuguese top leagues or for a minor division across the world.
Often, these released talents may have the potential to play First Team football in one of the top European leagues.
Remember to visit the World Browser to get a complete overview of all the latest Released players. You can find this option under World > Transfers. Here you can filter by nation or by availability.
It’s here you’ll also find all the latest Youth Intakes or Youth Departures which may be useful to monitor if searching for potential wonderkids and talents.
The Transfers page will give you a complete list of all the ingoing and outgoing transfers for both players and staff.
Some last words!
Let us finish off this piece about Football Manager beginner tips with a word of wizdom from FranklyFM84!
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. The only way to learn is by trial and error. System not working then change it, player doesn’t fit the system don’t be afraid to sell them and find one that does. Thinking outside the box works well, scout smaller leagues and find hidden gems.
FranklyFM84
Regardless of your desire to get better at Football Manager to go on a winning streak or lift every triphy there is, don’t forget it’s just a game.
No matter what others say about the game, what tips they offer or what suggestions they may have about playing Football Manager, it’s necessary to enjoy it. Play the game how you enjoy it and have fun signing the players you like.
After all, everyone is free to play the game how they want it. It’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to play Football Manager.
I hope you have enjoyed these many Football Manager beginners tips covering everything from tactics to signing players on Football Manager shared by us and our Community members.
Finally, I have to thank everyone who have taken the time to reply to our message on X. You can find the original thread with comments from our followers here. If you got any further tips or tricks or like to be featured in this comprehensive piece of Football Manager beginners tips, please use the comments below.
We also like to showcase Football Manager video tutorials or other guides looking at the different aspects of Football Manager. Get in touch to become a contributor to Passion4FM.
