Football manager 2019
Indeed, regardless of whether I was struggling at the bottom of the Vanarama National or flying high at the top of the Premier League, FM always kept me on my toes, with tactics needing frequent tweaking to prevent them from coming stale, and other teams constantly upping the ante in order to compete. In previous installments, I’ve observed a distinct lack of ambition even from the world’s biggest clubs, but this is not the case in FM2019. One enduring thing I noticed throughout this time was how competitive the game remained. A successful but sometimes frustrating spell in the premier league eventually culminated in Manchester City hiring me, and, a mere thirteen seasons and 570 hours after starting with Harrogate Town, I was lifting the Premier League trophy, FA Cup and Champions League treble. Having established a tenuous foothold in the Championship with Stevenage, Leeds came calling, and I guided them to the Championship title on the first time of asking. Having found my feet tactically, I achieved two promotions in four years. It was there my career quickly took flight. My career started very innocuously with Harrogate Town, with who I achieved precisely nothing for two and a half years before I upped sticks and moved, quite undeservingly, up a division to manage League 2 strugglers Stevenage. To say that my save is representative of all saves is probably untrue, but, considering I used fairly typical starting settings and was not in a position to influence the game’s upper echelons until at least 2027, it seems a fair sample.
Of course, this is somewhat a fated exercise in new games journalism. Today, I look at how it copes with this transition. However, the further you go in the game, the less and less predictable it becomes, moving away from Sports Interactive’s tightly curated, ruthlessly accurate starting database into the swampier waters of a fully generated footballing universe. With its ability to live off football’s perpetually self-producing narrative, its extraordinary depth, and its meticulous stat-tracking, its an experience that often ends up taking 400 hours rather than 40 for many players.
#FOOTBALL MANAGER 2019 SERIES#
Football Manager has always been a series that demands more of your time than the ordinary game.