This probably quite accurately replicates what it is like to be a real football manager, but the split nature of your fanbase means that you soon start to ignore their comments. The new social media feed might deal a blow to your ego the first time a fan takes you to task for a signing you are starting to have some niggling doubts about, but you quickly realise that every time you do something, your feed will be populated by some people who think you are a genius and others who think that you are a colossal buffoon. There are some new features this year, of course, but they lack substance. The social media feed’s inclusion is certainly necessary to reflect the way that football is covered in the modern media, but it is inconsequential when it comes to how you play the game. I’d wager that you will appreciate the interface improvements, but you might ask yourself whether that’s enough to justify forking out for a new entry. If you are a hardcore fan, however, who already knew where to find all those data points and statistics, whether you will see this year’s entry as a significant step forward is questionable. That streamlining and refinement does make the game easier to play, and by extension, more fun, particularly for newcomers or those who haven’t played for a few years. It is rather that the game is far better at presenting stuff that was already there to the player. That is the fact that the best thing about Football Manager 2017 isn’t strictly new. Here it is that we reach what might be a sticking point for some players. It’s easy to interpret, it’s easy to action, and in a game that’s all about decision-making, that makes all the difference. While some of this information was already available to you in Football Manager 2016, the problem was that you wouldn’t necessarily know it was there unless you actively went to seek it out, and even then, the fact that you had to made it a nuisance. Post-game, you’ll get another report with a heat map that shows you what positions your players tended to take up, data on who made the most mistakes, a graphic to highlight your key passing combinations, and so on, helping you to reconsider your approach ahead of the next match. Before games, you’ll get a pre-match report in your inbox with a handy graphic that displays your opposition’s formation in their last game, details on how and when they tend to score and concede goals, and other such info that you can use to inform your strategy. The improvements in the way the game presents information to you extends to match reports. It’s something that would otherwise be easy to overlook, but as anyone who has tried to turn around the fortunes of a team low on confidence will know, the small morale boost the player will get from this is the kind of detail that can make all the difference. Take the example of a player whose form has picked up: you now get an email pointing out that they’ve been playing well and suggesting it might be worth praising the player. Things that you couldn’t be bothered to do, or would just forget about, now get done by virtue of the fact that you don’t have to go out of your way to do them. Lest you wonder why I am getting so excited about a new report style, let me assure you that it makes a big difference to the way you play the game. Paying attention to fluctuations in form and changing your team selection, or making a tactical tweak to exploit a weakness you have identified in an opponent are the kinds of details that are rewarded with success, and it is incredibly satisfying to have the time you spend drilling down into stats to inform those decisions pay off. These stories are given their power by virtue of the fact that your decisions matter. The game continues to create the compulsion to share the kinds of stories that experienced football managers will be familiar with-about the inspired tactical tweak that turned around a two goal deficit and delivered an extra time winner, about the rough diamond that you picked from obscurity and turned into a star, or about the non-league non-entity that you transformed into a force to be reckoned with. That remains the case in Football Manager 2017.
The game comes to life through the tales we tell ourselves and our fellow managers about our successes and failures-indeed, you can find entire forums dedicated to just such a purpose. Though often described (not entirely without merit) as a glorified spreadsheet, Football Manager’s bedrock of stats and attribute numbers has proven to be fertile ground for the imagination.
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