Football Manager 2011 
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Football Manager: the diary of a descent into madnessApr 1, 2014 - PC Gamer Written by Iain Macintosh While putting together the book, Football Manager Stole My Life, my co-authors and I trawled hundreds of personal accounts of virtual chalkboard addiction. We spoke to games journalists, psychologists and actual, real life footballers who had been afflicted. We even went back and played innumerable seasons of classic Championship/Football Manager too. Just for research. Oh Christ, here come the sweats. We never set out to help cure anyone. All we wanted to do was to let people know that they were not alone. That there were others like them out there, wandering this world in body while their minds were elsewhere entirely. Probably scouting the Eredivisie for 19 year-old wingbacks. All roads lead back to Holland. What follows is an amalgamation of stories designed to show you what lurks in the shadows of this hidden world, a bit like those one of those videos about heroin that they used to show you at school. This is what can happen when you play Football Manager too much. DAY ONE: You feel a frisson of guilt that you ve just spent three hours on a pre-season campaign, but you shrug it off with a smile. It was fun, wasn t it? You assigned most of the more mundane tasks to your assistant, because you don t want to waste time on stuff like coaching, do you? That s what coaches are for. You re just happy enough to make a jokey bid for Lionel Messi and then play some games. And you did well too. There are now four Japanese second division teams who won t forget your name in a hurry. Well done, you. DAY TWO: The season didn t start well and you think you know why. You were too casual yesterday. You just threw a team out, you didn t prepare them on a game-by-game basis. You didn t even work on set-pieces. Who are you, Harry Redknapp? While your partner is watching television, you devise an intricate corner routine that sends your strikers to the far post, hopefully dragging the opposition defenders with them, while the ball goes to the near post where your towering central midfielder lurks ominously. It pays instant dividends and you win the next game 3-0. You ve never felt such a profound sense of satisfaction. This set piece is probably what Hawking meant when he described looking into the face of God. DAY THREE: After reading an article about Manchester United s Class of 92 , you resolve to pay more attention to your youth players. When your partner heads upstairs for an early night, you plough through until 1am, carefully tailoring individual coaching routines for every member of your U18 squad, teaching them new skills, assigning them new roles. They won t all make it, of course, there will be some casualties. Not all can earn the fabled black card. But every youngster deserves a chance, an opportunity to make the most of their potential. And that s what you re going to give them. DAY FOUR: Your partner is out late tonight. You don t mind. In fact, you re quite keen that they stay out longer because European qualification...Football Manager 2013 hands-on, or feet-on, with Sports Interactive’s streamlined simOct 12, 2012 - PC Gamer Football, to paraphrase the great Bill Shankly, may be more important than life and death, but sadly such inconveniences tend to get in the way of the digital version. In recent years I’ve found myself drifting away from Sports Interactive’s series as it grows steadily more complex – and with it, more time-consuming. This season’s headline feature, the stripped-back Classic mode, feels made for me: I can whizz through a season in half the time, ignoring peripheral concerns and concentrating on buying players, picking my team and sending them out to do me proud. Crucially, it still feels like FM: convenient, rather than compromised. I start the preview version by taking the reins at Man City. It feels strange: the point of FM is the realisation of the eternal fan complaint, “I could do a better job”. In the past, picking City gave you the chance to exceed low expectations, but no longer being the underdog brings pressures of a different kind. Still, a £100m transfer budget? Not the worst problem to have. I follow my scout’s instructions and sign Fulham’s Bryan Ruiz. Ruiz arrives on a temporary visa – at which point a little shopping trolley appears at the bottom-right, allowing me to pay real-world cash to abolish work permits. That might sit uneasily with FM veterans – although it’ll never show up in Sim mode, paying to remove inconvenient design decisions, even those based on reality, never feels satisfying. The option to top up my transfer budget appears next, and more options turn up later in the campaign. The pace is palpably quicker. You can even hit an Instant Result button, which puts match day responsibilities in the hands of your management team. I regret it the one time I try this – a match I’d comfortably won on a different save ends up a 2-1 bum-squeaker. Players and tactical selections are erratic, and one of my team is sent off, failing to understand the concept of a friendly by scissoring his opponent in a vicious touchline lunge. That incident does, however, highlight the superior animation and match engine. It’s still awkward at times – player positioning is immaculate, but the ball takes some bizarre bounces, while players will shuffle sideways like crabs. Yet it’s more satisfying to see your striker slam one into the top corner than in the overhead view, and even with some kinks to iron out it’s a marked improvement on last year. Sim mode, meanwhile, now allows you to get moody in press conferences. You can be timid, deadpan or aggressive as you praise or berate rivals or players. And it’s as authentic as ever: here, Balotelli turned up for the first day of training with whiplash, claiming he’d got it from a fall at home. Perhaps the bookies should consider revising those 7-2 title odds. Developer: Sports Interactive Publisher: Sega Link: www.footballmanager.com Release: winter 2012Football Manager 2013 release date announced, pre-orders come with beta accessSep 28, 2012 - PC Gamer Attention, ballfoot fans! Get out the iron and flatten out those touchline suits. The latest iteration of Football Manager will go live on Steam at one minute past midnight on November 02, and you can get in two weeks early if you pre-order from one of these places. That's according to an announcement post on the Football Manager 2012 site, which explains that the beta version "will be very close to the final game." It'll include "FM, classic mode & challenges," but no network game. Beta saves will be compatible with the full game when it's released. You can hear about this year's updates, and the new classic mode, from the ever-affable Miles Jacobson in our Football Manager 2013 interview. If you'd rather get the goods via your eyes have a look at the Football Manager 2013 announcement video.Football Manager 2013: Miles Jacobson interviewSep 7, 2012 - PC Gamer “I’m pretty happy with the way it is at the moment,” says Sports Interactive boss Miles Jacobson of the latest edition of the world’s most popular footy management sim. After yesterday’s video announcement, we rang Miles for a chinwag about challenges, cheats and camera angles – and why this year’s edition promises to be the most accessible Football Manager in years. This year’s big new addition is the streamlined Classic Mode. What prompted you to introduce it? It’s been in planning for a few years. There aren’t many features that we come up with immediately and put it into next year because we tend to work in three-year cycles - so at the moment even though I’m directing FM13 I’m still involved with designing 14, 15 and 16. But something we’ve seen happening more and more over the last few years, particularly in comments sections on more mainstream games sites and in newspapers for example, is that people are saying “we don’t have the time to play it any more”. After we finished FM11 I actually brought it up in the post-mortem afterwards: I asked how many people had played the game and most of the younger guys in the studio put their hands up. But some of the old-school guys…we’ve got 16 people here now who’ve been at the studio for more than ten years, and I think only three of the 16 put their hand up at that point. So I just asked the others, “Why haven’t you played it? You clearly still enjoy the game or you wouldn’t still be working here.” And they were all saying, “Yeah, but I’ve got kids and I have to spend some time with them,” or “My partner wants to spend some time with me,” or “I’ve got to go and see the family, so I just don’t have the time to put into it any more.” And that was basically the point where the bank broke. We were already doing FM Handheld at that point, and I said to them, “Why don’t you play Handheld instead?” and got “Well, it’s not deep enough for me, I want to be able to do this stuff, I just don’t have the time to do it.” So that’s when a few of the very senior people within the studio including myself and Oliver Collyer sat down and started plotting. And then I put it into production this year. Actually, we were going to look at doing it as a completely separate game, but I just thought: why not have it as part of the PC package and reward the people who’ve played our game for years by giving them extra modes? Or let new players have Classic mode as the first port of call, and if they find that they like it maybe they’ll move up to Sim mode. Or maybe they’ll try out the Challenge mode or Network games. It’s all about trying to provide a game that entertains as many people as possible, really. And the only way to do it while keeping the simulation completely sacrosanct was to have a new game mode in there. Are there any further options within Classic mode that players can turn on or off to further adjust the game? We’ve tried to design it in a simple way. There are ways to turn other things off inside the game ...Football Manager 2013 announced – video reveals new featuresSep 6, 2012 - PC Gamer By Chris Schilling It’s that time of year when the leaves turn brown, the air gets chilly, and the ass-shaped groove in your favourite chair gets a little deeper. Yes, it’s almost Football Manager time – and, much like a new boss cheerfully clutching a wad of petrodollars from an obscenely wealthy overseas backer, this year’s edition arrives promising wholesale changes. The headlining feature of Football Manager 2013 is a welcome one for those who’ve grown rather overwhelmed by the feature creep in recent years. The new Classic mode – or ‘FMC’ as the press blurb is keen to refer to it as – cuts out many of the minor responsibilities, allowing you to focus on the fundamentals. “We decided to try to find a way to accommodate players with limited free time, without significantly diluting the experience,” says Sports Interactive’s Miles Jacobson. SI suggests that FMC allows players to complete an entire season in 8-10 hours. Also new in FM13 is a Challenge mode taken from the smartphone versions of last year’s game. There are five challenges in total, each lasting around half a season, and all recreating scenarios common to the beautiful game: attempting to win trophies with a team of youngsters, for example, or escaping relegation after footing the table over the festive season. If the mode proves popular, SI has promised to provide further downloadable challenges throughout the year, which may or may not include being asked to win the title after losing your star striker to an extended golfing holiday for two-thirds of the campaign. Elsewhere, you’ll be able to unlock additional modifiers to give yourself a mid-season boost, topping up your funds during the transfer window, or cutting the red tape that’s holding up your expensive import’s work permit. And if all this makes it sound a bit like FM’s gone all sports casual on us, fear not: the main game remains gleefully uncompromising. Says Jacobson: “I would, however, like to stress to our many, many fans around the world that the introduction of FMC will not impact in any way on the game that they’ve come to know and love.” Heck, how many games this year are promoting ‘realistic tax regimes’ as a new feature? Other bits and bobs include a “more televisual” match engine, use of Steam’s network functionality, leaderboards, a new UI and the ability to create a more flexible training regimen. Media interaction has also been tweaked, offering a range of moods that will hopefully allow you to sulkily send out your assistant after a battering at home from your nearest rivals, or to nonchalantly dismiss your team’s title hopes when you’re ten points clear with three to play. It’s out on PC and Mac at some point before Christmas 2012.SEGA closes offices in France, Germany, Spain, Australia and Benelux. London HQ will remainJun 28, 2012 - PC Gamer SEGA have just announced that many of their European offices are about to close. New distribution partners have been announced across France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The veteran developer/publisher are "realigning" their strategy and closing all offices apart from the London headquarters. The UK office will be responsible for managing European distribution from July 1st, assisted by Koch Media, Level03 Distribution and 5 Star Games. “SEGA is entering a new and exciting phase that will position the company as a content led organisation maximising sales with strong and balanced IP such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Total War, Football Manager and the Aliens franchise,” said Jurgen Post, COO of SEGA Europe. Rumours of closures originated at E3 but were quickly snuffed out by Studio Director at Sports Interactive, Miles Jacobson. His crytpic tweet may or may not have something to do with the sport they call "footkick." Good luck to all at Sega Europe with their transition into the digital-heavy strategy. Our sympathies go out to those affected negatively by the changes.Why I play Football Manager: the story of Shane “the wonder kid” PaulOct 26, 2011 - PC Gamer Football Manager 2012 has been released, and like every year, the same questions are being asked: Why does a game that looks like Microsoft Excel sell so well? Why would you want to manage footballers when they could be playing them? Why do so many people play it for hours on end? Well I've played a lot of Football Manager over the years, so I'm going to try and explain why. It's because despite all the stats and number crunching, Football Manager is a game about stories. It's about the little narratives that emerge from every game. Like this one. The story of Shane Paul. This tale comes from way back in Football Manager 2006. I was doing the same thing I do every year; trying to win the Champion's League with my beloved Aston Villa. In my way were Italian giants Inter Milan, who had more money, a better squad and a long tradition of winning things. The first leg of the game had not gone well. Inter had come to Villa Park and made us look like schoolboys playing against adults. They sauntered down the pitch like we weren't even there and scored twice, then did what Italian teams do best: shut us down and sat on their lead. Worse than that, they also inflicted a series of niggling injuries on my team. Not enough to put people out for long, but just enough to ensure that I'd have to fill my bench with inexperienced youth players, and pray that I'd never need to use them. Enter Shane Paul. Shane was one of my youth team, he was only eighteen at the time, but already my coaches were telling me he wasn't going to make it at this level. There were better prospects in the squad, but I was incredibly short of left sided players and. despite being so incredibly right footed he probably walked with a limp, Shane could play on the left wing a little, so he made the cut. Sixty minutes into the Inter game, things were still not going well. The Italians knew they had a good lead and a home advantage, so they played a strong defensive game. No matter how often we attacked they held us off confidently. I tried everything; I tried to hold back and keep the ball, I pushed forward recklessly, I changed formation, I upped the aggression, I did every tactical tweak I could think of, but nothing worked. Clearly it was time to make some changes. The problem was that, because of the injuries, I didn't have much in the way of substitutes. Most of my bench was statistically worse than the players on the pitch, but sometimes freshness counts, so young Shane was sent out for an under performing left winger. That's the thing about Football Manager, once in a while all the sensible tactics fall flat, and that's when you start trying the crazy ones. Playing an inexperienced youngster out of position in a major match? This was a desperation move, and I knew it. For another half hour, little changed. We pushed them hard, but they would not be moved. They were determined to shut us out, and we couldn't stop them. Shane popped up once or twice but he wasn't distinguishing himsel...Football Manager 2012 demo out nowOct 6, 2011 - PC Gamer The Football Manger 2012 demo is available now on Steam, offering the first half-season of 11 quick-start leagues set in England, Australia, Scotland, France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. If you manage to put together a decent squad and can't bear to lose them, you'll be able to carry over all of your progress into the full version when it's released on October 21. "The demo includes the biggest leagues in the world and allows you to put your managerial skills to the test on a global stage," reads the Steam blurb, which explains why it weighs in at just over 2.7 GB. That's 2.7 GB of pure, sweet footballing data. Yum.Football Manager 2012 Steam DRM enrages fansSep 28, 2011 - PC Gamer Football Manager fans have voiced their anger at the integration of Steamworks into Football Manager 2012. The move to Steam means copies of the game will need to be activated online before being able to play. Eurogamer indicates 40 pages of comments reacting to the news on the Sports Interactive forums, with thousands of posts from fans angry with the changes. Some fans are threatening to boycott the series until the online activation requirement is removed. Sega tell Eurogamer that Football Manager has moved to Steam to combat piracy. "Make no mistake, if a quarter of the people that usually pirate the game switch to purchasing Football Manager 2012, the sales of the game worldwide would more than double," they say. "This would lead to increased development budgets and more benefits for all of you who do buy the game." "We've taken this decision because we believe that the steps the consumer has to take are not excessive, and that as a one-time only measure with no tracking or reporting it is not too intrusive. Having worked with Steam for a few years now we also believe that their system is ever improving and gives Football Manager players a good service of free auto-updating, achievements and other great benefits without cost or hassle." In the scheme of things, a one-time online activation system seems relatively tame, especially in the light of Ubisoft's always-online DRM system, and games like Diablo 3, which cannot be played offline, even in single player. For many hardcore FM players, Football Manager will be one of the only games they play. It's interesting to see the reaction of fans from a community less less desensitized to the growing extremity of many publishers' anti-piracy solutions. Are you a Football Manager player? Let us know what you think about FM 2012's move to Steam.Football Manager 2012 release date announced, scouting detailedSep 13, 2011 - PC GamerSports Interactive recently announced that the latest entry in the veteran Football Manager series would be out later this year. Eurogamer have the date. It's October 21. The release date announcement was revealed in the first entry in what will become a series of blog posts providing detailed info on FM 2012's new features. Today, Sports Interactive studio director Miles Jacobson discusses improvements to the scouting system, and talks about the unique inside access the studio has to professional scouts in the field. Update: slotted in the latest trailer above. Thanks to The Reticule for the heads up. "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." writes Jacobson. This real world data from stadiums and training grounds around the world is one of reasons FM one of the most detailed sports sims around. Using those databases packed full of authentic information, you'll be able to assign a scout to analyse an opposition side. They'll come back with a full report detailing that club's best players in each position. You'll also be able to use reports to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of clubs against one another. With all that intelligence under your belt, it should theoretically be easier to put together a strategy to beat tough opponents. Over time, FM 2012 will monitor the success of this strategy, and return at Tactic analysis. "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," writes Jacobson. There's even a separate goal analysis tool, which will collate information on where your goals are scored from on the pitch, which players and positions tend to get the most assists, and more. As well as scouting, Football Manager 2012 will get updates to the match engine, and a series of tutorials to help guide new players into the world of football management.The best custom leagues for Football Manager 2011Jul 26, 2011 - PC Gamer Do you find yourself getting bored with the usual league systems present in Football Manager? Have you always wanted to see a British Superleague or have the chance to play in a league based on the USSR circa 1991? If you can say yes to any of those questions then this list is what you need. Inside you can find five of the best, or most bizarre, custom leagues ready for you to play right now. To install a custom league just download the file, extract it and place it in your Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2011/editor data folder (you may have to create this). When you start a new game you'll see a section called 'Editor data files', tick the box marked 'change' and you'll be able to select which custom leagues you want. After that you can choose them from the database as normal. 1. Celtic League My Celtic roots demand that I mention the Celtic League by El Generico. This league groups together clubs from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany, a little like the Rugby Union Celtic League. There's a strong financial system in place, with the top division getting twice the money that the Scottish Premier League does. It also features an evenly distributed financial system in the lower leagues, something that the FA could do with taking a look at. 2. Expanded English League System Are you a fan of the Metropolitan Police Football Club? If you are, you must despair that you aren't able to play as your beloved team in FM2011. Fortunately TheShots has come to your rescue with a greatly expanded English league system. It goes down to level 10 of the pyramid, so if you thought taking a team from Conference South to the Premier League was a challenge you haven't seen anything yet. Imagine trying to take Norton United from the Vodkat League Division One to the Champions League, now that would be an achievement. 3.San Marino League I'm constantly amazed by the world of international football, where some of the league structures are truly mind boggling. I feel safe and comfortable when I look at the standard English pyramid in FM2011, but then I come across something like Reiver's San Marino league. There are fifteen teams split across two groups. Each team plays two matches with teams from their own group and one match with a team from the other group to give a total of 20 or 21 matches. Then the top three of each group take part in a double elimination tournament to crown a champion. It's bizarre, but that's football. 4.Back In The USSR This is an unusual but historically interesting league. The Soviet League Structure attempts to recreate the football league of the USSR as it was back in 1991. It isn't perfect, neither was the USSR, but it gives you a taste of what the football structure was like behind the Iron Curtain before countries like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan established their own leagues. 5. Welsh Super League More national pride coming through here with a Welsh Super League by El Generico again. This is for fans who feel ...5 essential Football Manager 2011 modsJul 12, 2011 - PC Gamer Football Manager 2011 has plenty of custom leagues and new skins, but mods themselves are pretty scarce. Still, we've selected the top five Mods to customise and streamline your Football Manager 2011 experience. Click through for the mods, and details of how to download. 1.Genie Scout Genie Scout is the ultimate spying tool, everything you ever wanted to know about a player, staff member or club is available at your fingertips. Search for anyone present in your save game database and find out every last detail, including those special hidden attributes that you never get to see in the game. The best time to use it is when you scouts recommend a player from Belize but don't reveal many of his stats. Hit up Genie Scout and you will learn everything you want to know about him, from his current ability to his potential ability. If David Cameron had this, maybe he would've seen Andy Coulson's dark side before hiring him. FMGenie is an independent program, so just install it wherever you like and point it towards your Football Manager save. 2. RTE - Real Time Editing If Genie Scout isn't enough of a sneaky cheat for your taste, then maybe Football Manager Real Time Editor is more up your street. With this little tool you can edit the attributes of your team, players and staff on the fly. If you want Welsh minnows 'The New Saints' to have a billionaire sugar daddy pumping money into the club and to turn all your players into Lionel Messi clones, this is the tool for you. But if you go ahead and make all these changes, you have to ask yourself where the challenge will be. I advise caution with this one, you don't want to make the game a cake walk. RTE is an independent program, so just install it wherever you like and point it towards your Football Manager save. 3. Shirt Designing There are numerous team kits in Football Manager which are just plain wrong and some that are just God awful. Help is at hand with Smart Shirt Designer 2, a tool which does as it says on the tin; it allows you to design new shirts for Football Manager. You don't have to do things accurately, who ever said that Liverpool's home kit needs to be red? Why not turn it bright pink? The opportunities are endless to change team logos, sponsors, colours and stripes. The best use for this one is to humiliate the teams you hate. Petty, but worth it. Smart Shirt Designer is an independent program, so just install it wherever you like and point it towards your Football Manager save. 4. Faces Everywhere Do you feel a twinge of sadness when you start playing Football Manager and you realise that you can't stare longingly at the face of your favourite player? You are a sad, sad person if you do, but help is at hand with the mega facepack which contains over 80,000 images of players, staff and officials from all over the world. This is the result of a massive Football Manager community effort and is ideal for those of you who want to see a bit more glitz and glamour in a game which can be ver...Five essential Football Manager 2011 modsJul 12, 2011 - PC Gamer Football Manager 2011 has plenty of custom leagues and new skins, but mods themselves are pretty scarce. Still, we've selected the top five Mods to customise and streamline your Football Manager 2011 experience. Click through for the mods, and details of how to download. 1.Genie Scout Genie Scout is the ultimate spying tool, everything you ever wanted to know about a player, staff member or club is available at your fingertips. Search for anyone present in your save game database and find out every last detail, including those special hidden attributes that you never get to see in the game. The best time to use it is when you scouts recommend a player from Belize but don't reveal many of his stats. Hit up Genie Scout and you will learn everything you want to know about him, from his current ability to his potential ability. If David Cameron had this, maybe he would've seen Andy Coulson's dark side before hiring him. FMGenie is an independent program, so just install it wherever you like and point it towards your Football Manager save. 2. RTE - Real Time Editing If Genie Scout isn't enough of a sneaky cheat for your taste, then maybe Football Manager Real Time Editor is more up your street. With this little tool you can edit the attributes of your team, players and staff on the fly. If you want Welsh minnows 'The New Saints' to have a billionaire sugar daddy pumping money into the club and to turn all your players into Lionel Messi clones, this is the tool for you. But if you go ahead and make all these changes, you have to ask yourself where the challenge will be. I advise caution with this one, you don't want to make the game a cake walk. RTE is an independent program, so just install it wherever you like and point it towards your Football Manager save. 3. Shirt Designing There are numerous team kits in Football Manager which are just plain wrong and some that are just God awful. Help is at hand with Smart Shirt Designer 2, a tool which does as it says on the tin; it allows you to design new shirts for Football Manager. You don't have to do things accurately, who ever said that Liverpool's home kit needs to be red? Why not turn it bright pink? The opportunities are endless to change team logos, sponsors, colours and stripes. The best use for this one is to humiliate the teams you hate. Petty, but worth it. Smart Shirt Designer is an independent program, so just install it wherever you like and point it towards your Football Manager save. 4. Faces Everywhere Do you feel a twinge of sadness when you start playing Football Manager and you realise that you can't stare longingly at the face of your favourite player? You are a sad, sad person if you do, but help is at hand with the mega facepack which contains over 80,000 images of players, staff and officials from all over the world. This is the result of a massive Football Manager community effort and is ideal for those of you who want to see a bit more glitz and glamour in a game which can be ver...The 10 best skins for Football Manager 2011Jun 16, 2011 - PC Gamer Football Manager is, despite everything, a game about menus. You can and will spend most of your playing time staring at rows of numbers, so why not pretty them up a bit? We've collected five of the best Football Manager skins to make your stat crunching a little bit shinier. Find them, along with installation instructions, beneath the cut. Installing a skin couldn't be simpler, just go to C:\My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2011\skins and drop them in (if you don't have a skins folder, just make one). Then open the in game preferences and tick 'always reload skin on confirm' and un-tick 'use skin cache'. Then select your skin from the dropdown menu. 1. Steklo I used Steklo back in last year's Football Manager and this year's version is as good as ever. Steklo has a sort of dark, simple, well laid out design that reminds me of the steam interface. 2. Pastel For those who prefer things a little tamer, a little lighter, a little more Ikea style, there's Pastel 11. Which replaces FM’s bold colours with a more washed out, easy-going look for a more relaxing experience. 3. Flex One of the more popular FM skins, the perennial Flex skin is as strong in FM11 as ever. The current edition comes with both left and right sided menu versions for the sinister lefties out there. 4. Onepiece Another popular FM2010 skin returns, Onepeice is simple, classic and clear to read, exactly the qualities one could hope for in an FM skin. Comes with or without the calendar for those rebellious souls who just don't give a damn what date it is. 5. Windows 7 One of the more unusual efforts in skin making, this skin re-imagines Football Manager to resemble Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system. The result is surprisingly pleasant and easy to use, just try not to confuse it with your real operating system, or you'll be trying to sign Eden Hazard to your hard drive. 6. iTunes For those who prefer Apple Interfaces to Windows, this skin dresses Football Manager up in the clothes of iTunes. Given how popular Apple's UIs are it's almost surprising more games don't try this. 7. Flexion Don't care for all this faffing about with new skins? Prefer things how they were in the old days? This skin has you covered. Flexion is a retro skin based on the FM2007 menus, because change isn't always for the better. 8. Neue.2 Enough retro! Out with the old, in with the Neue... New... Newey... Neway...Nyuu... honestly I have no idea how to pronounce the name of this skin, but that's thankfully no barrier to using it. 9. Netbook and Netbook Dark Football Manager doesn't require a high end machine, and it's easy to drop in for a match or two if you've got a free moment, so it's the ideal game to load onto your netbook. The trouble is that most skins aren't optimised for smaller, lower resolution screens. This one changes all that, being specifically calibrated for Netbook play (although for some reason the tactics wizard screen doesn't work very well). Also comes in a dark version...Best Football Manager 2011 signingsMay 3, 2011 - PC Gamer Since our last article on Football Manager 2011 Sports Interactive have put up one of their habitual data updates, making some players hard to obtain and bringing new ones into contention, so let's take a tour of the best bargain buys for your team in Football Manger 2011. Goalkeepers: Vincent Enyeama Enyeama has been the go to man for teams that need a bargain goalkeeper for years now. Clocking in at a mere £250k and eager to swap the Israeli leagues for somewhere more illustrious, his only downside is that he doesn't have EU membership, but his Nigeria caps should get him a work permit. Alex Smithies Yeah, that's right, the next generation of English goalkeeping is hiding out in League One Huddersfield. Alex Smithies can be picked up for a under £1 million and makes a serviceable backup keeper for any mid table team for one or two years before taking the number one jersey. Fawzi Chaouchi Fawzi used to be free on the last patch, and while that's sadly no longer the case he is still very cheap at £500k. The Algerian keeper is experienced enough to be an impressive keeper and young enough that he can keep going for years to come. Word of warning though, in addition to his annoying non-EU status he has a very high eccentricity stat, a double edged sword if ever there was one. Defenders: Dzmitry Verkhovtsov Sometimes you don't need subtlety and class, sometimes you need a gigantic Belarusian centre half with the strength and aggression of a charging rhino, for those times there's Dzmitry Verkhovtsov and he can be yours for under £500k. He'll get a work permit too, but still counts as non-EU. Matthew Booth The conventional wisdom in Football Manager is that younger is better, but Matthew Booth defies that logic. This 33 giant centreback can be yours for a trifling 50k and do a job in any league. Comes with a British passport to easily avoid EU restrictions. Leonel Galeano Like Leandro Gioda and Nicolas Otamendi before him Leonel Galeano is an affordable and rock solid Argentine centre back who can anchor defences for years to come for a mere £3.5 million. If you need an EU freindly option consider the less experienced Raphael Varane at £5 million. Sime Vrsaljko Touted by some as the new Vedran Corluka, Sime has way too many consonants in his name, but that does stop him from being an enthusiastic and affordable right back. He is non EU, but should get a work permit on appeal. Jose Angel Jose is an impressive young Spanish left back available for a few million from Real Sporting who will only get better with time, a quality buy for most teams, but especially Spanish ones. If you have difficulty obtaining him consider his equally impressive teammate Roberto Canella. Midfielders: Milan Badelj Holy versatility Milan! Badelj can play just about anywhere in midfield and brings impressive technical ability and flair with him wherever he goes for a mere £3 million. If his non-EU status proves a stumbling block consider the similarly cheap but less impressi...Best Football Manager 2011 signingsMay 3, 2011 - PC Gamer Since our last article on Football Manager 2011 Sports Interactive have put up one of their habitual data updates, making some players hard to obtain and bringing new ones into contention, so let's take a tour of the best bargain buys for your team in Football Manger 2011. Goalkeepers: Vincent Enyeama Enyeama has been the go to man for teams that need a bargain goalkeeper for years now. Clocking in at a mere £250k and eager to swap the Israeli leagues for somewhere more illustrious, his only downside is that he doesn't have EU membership, but his Nigeria caps should get him a work permit. Alex Smithies Yeah, that's right, the next generation of English goalkeeping is hiding out in League One Huddersfield. Alex Smithies can be picked up for a under £1 million and makes a serviceable backup keeper for any mid table team for one or two years before taking the number one jersey. Fawzi Chaouchi Fawzi used to be free on the last patch, and while that's sadly no longer the case he is still very cheap at £500k. The Algerian keeper is experienced enough to be an impressive keeper and young enough that he can keep going for years to come. Word of warning though, in addition to his annoying non-EU status he has a very high eccentricity stat, a double edged sword if ever there was one. Defenders: Dzmitry Verkhovtsov Sometimes you don't need subtlety and class, sometimes you need a gigantic Belarusian centre half with the strength and aggression of a charging rhino, for those times there's Dzmitry Verkhovtsov and he can be yours for under £500k. He'll get a work permit too, but still counts as non-EU. Matthew Booth The conventional wisdom in Football Manager is that younger is better, but Matthew Booth defies that logic. This 33 giant centreback can be yours for a trifling 50k and do a job in any league. Comes with a British passport to easily avoid EU restrictions. Leonel Galeano Like Leandro Gioda and Nicolas Otamendi before him Leonel Galeano is an affordable and rock solid Argentine centre back who can anchor defences for years to come for a mere £3.5 million. If you need an EU freindly option consider the less experienced Raphael Varane at £5 million. Sime Vrsaljko Touted by some as the new Vedran Corluka, Sime has way too many consonants in his name, but that does stop him from being an enthusiastic and affordable right back. He is non EU, but should get a work permit on appeal. Jose Angel Jose is an impressive young Spanish left back available for a few million from Real Sporting who will only get better with time, a quality buy for most teams, but especially Spanish ones. If you have difficulty obtaining him consider his equally impressive teammate Roberto Canella. Midfielders: Milan Badelj Holy versatility Milan! Badelj can play just about anywhere in midfield and brings impressive technical ability and flair with him wherever he goes for a mere £3 million. If his non-EU status proves a stumbling block consider the similarly cheap but less impressi...Football Manager 2011 update is liveMar 9, 2011 - PC Gamer The latest Football Manager 11 patch will update the player database to include all the hirings and firings of the January transfer window. As well as the updated rosters, the patch will add a ton of fixes, interface tweaks and balance adjustments. The changes will improve everything from the player/manager conversation system, to the accuracy of Uraguayan TV revenues. The full patch notes were posted on the Sports Interactive forums, and they're as lengthy as you might imagine for a sim as deep as Football Manager. The 4,000 word list of changes includes improvements to set piece behaviour on the pitch. Goalkeeper AI during corners is more solid, players mark more competently, and SI have "rebalanced number of shirt tugs vs trips." You'll no longer be able to overwork your players as much, as SI have squashed a bug that caused players not to go on holiday at the end of the season. You can't be quite as bamboozling in conversation either. The option to tell players they cost too much even though they were free has been removed. Occasional cases where players would react cheerfully to being fired have also gone. Other improvements include de-spamming of the news filters of incessant sponsorship roundups, and more accurate financial models for leagues in Russia, Brazil, Denmark and others. You can read the enormous list of changes on the Sports Interactive forums. The patch for the boxed version can be downloaded from the Football Manager site, the Steam version will update automatically the next time it's started up.Football Manager comes out on top for 2010Jan 21, 2011 - PC Gamer Statistics for new retails sales across 2010 have been released, and it's been a big year for SEGA with Football Manager 2011 and 2010 taking the titles of first and second best-selling PC games., respectively. Read on for the full top 10. The top 10 PC games in 2010 were: 1 - Football Manager 2011 2 - Football Manager 2010 2 - The Sims 3 4 - World of WarCraft: Cataclysm 5 - StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty 6 - The Sims 3: Ambitions 7 - Battlefield: Bad Company 2 8 - Call of Duty: Black Ops 9 - The Sims 3: Design & High-Tech Stuff 10 - The Sims 3: World Adventures The chart, which only includes new retail purchases and not Steam sales, shows that the world continues to love The Sims and are still enthralled by Blizzard's games. PC gamers were also less enthusiastic about Call of Duty this year; Black Ops came in at number one for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms, but failed to impact the Top 5 on PC. Football Manager dev awarded O.B.E. by the QueenJan 1, 2011 - PC Gamer Studio Director of Sports Interactive, the studio behind the stellar Football Manager series, has been awarded an OBE by the Queen in the latest round of honours awards. In full, O.B.E. stands for Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and is one of a series of chivalric awards created by George V, the highest of which makes you a knight of the British Empire. Suffice to say, not too many game developers have made the esteemed honours lists. The co-founder of Sports Interactive, Olly Collyer, congratulated Jacobson on the Sports Interactive site, saying, "we think this is very much deserved for all the hard work involved in not only establishing a good sense of business to a raw and young Sports Interactive all those years ago, but also evolving the studio into an equal and more professional partner with its publisher and also a responsible one, via the involvement with various charities, as well as taking away the things we don't like doing to allow us to concentrate on coding!" "The honour is also deserved recognition for lots of other work Miles has done away from SI over the years on the BAFTA games committee, Develop advisory board and as a founding trustee of GamesAid as well as many other advisory committees." Collyer adds that "apparently he was in the frame for a knighthood but they didn't have a platform high enough to allow the appropriate member of the Royal Family to reach his shoulder with their sword so they settled for the O.B.E." Writing in response to the news, Jacobson said "It really is very humbling, and is further recognition for the whole SI team around the world. I'm a bit lost for words at the moment, so I'll leave it at that for now." For a few clues as to how the Sports Interactive developer earned himself a place on the honours list, check out our review of Football Manager 2011.Weeklong Sale - 30% off on Football Manager 2011Dec 14, 2010 - AnnouncementFootball Manager 2011 is now on sale through Dec. 20th at 10AM PST. Act now and save!
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