Football Manager 2011 recently jumped back to number one in the PC charts a staggering 8 months after release. Paying testament to the longevity of the Sports Interactive series not only from one title to the other but the titles themselves which will rarely seem outdated quickly.

What makes us keep playing these games for so long? What makes the series so popular over the long-term? One of the many area in which it can boast key attributes is within it’s flexibility, allowing the gamer to choose how they want to play the game within a framework. Different levels, depth of approaches and teams each bring it’s own unique scenario and challenges can be found from Barcelona to Icheon United to Southport.

I am now in my mid 20′s and have grown up playing the each of the SI Games titles since 2009. Thats a lot of game time to commit to one thing, hell if I would have committed so much effort and time to my degree I may be a Dr now, but without changing things up a bit, challenging myself with new objectives it could have been a tiresome task to load up FM2012. Understanding and implementing the moneyball concept has been my latest enriching task.

UEFA financial fair play rules set to take affect this year is creating a footballing world where to compete you have to live within your means and get more bang for your buck. Moneyball has become the vogue word as if it is now the right and only way to play. Liverpool are the highest profile name to be adopting this approach at the moment, but you will also seem such concepts feature in the strategies of Celtic, Udinese and Lyon.

Moneyball a book originally written by Michael Lewis based on the approach of Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane who gained his playing advantage by exploiting player drafts, bringing in players based on the study of sabermetics and doing away with the traditional scouting techniques.

John W Henry’s has made use of such techniques at his own baseball side and now is learning how he can introduce and adapt this for Liverpool. I have been really interested in this way of playing and it has added something different to my games. So I thought I would introduce you to some basics of the approach to begin with.

1. Plug the Gaps

“Imagine that you’re a cost-conscious consumer who finds himself starving and without food in the middle of nowhere, with just one shop – and it sells overpriced food. You have the money, so do you choose to go hungry, or pay to fill the void? (in this case, in your stomach).” Quote from Tomkins Times

Arsenal have been that cost conscious consumer as of late who seems to want to starve (itself from silverware)

Many people mistake moneyball for getting players as on the cheap. Moneyball is not about this but about exploiting the market and playing it well. Before you can start implementing any of the other tactics you have to sort out your first team first and make sure that it is a competitive force. Using your resources effectively.

Since the new owners arrived, Liverpool have spent a massive £105m on players. But near  £60m has already been recouped from player sales with more players soon to leave. The team now looks a much improved squad as a whole and not just by splashing alot of money on one player, the average age has dropped and many of these players will keep their value for along longer. Take the Torres deal for example. Out went a injury prone player whose stats suggest is running out of steam, not surprising after years of none stop competitions for £50m. In came two younger players, whose numbers suggest are on the up.

Spend the money to get your team to the place where the resources will allow you, work to build a competitive base before moving on to other aspects of the side.

For those working on a tighter budget think about how you can exploit the market. Strikers are always more expensive then goalkeepers. Two stats that suggest a successful team are percentage of shots on target and number of saves made. Buying a decent defense and goalkeeper on with a small budget could be worth more then splashing all your cash on a star striker, and if you do find someone that will hit the target. Look at Peter Odemwingie, £1m and has one of the best % rates on target then any other striker in the league.

Once you have got your side together you can risk you time on using the rest of your resources to find those bargain players who will go on to make a profit.

2. Invest in Your Scouting Network

To exploit the transfer market, you need to know the products within the market. This is where your scouting network comes in, constantly scouring the leagues for young talent that you can bring into your side. Talent that you can bring in for a good price with potential re-sale prices.

My own scouting network is geared towards spotting the best talent as it emerges, scouts with knowledge in a particular country will be my eyes in that country. I will scout the major leagues for knowledge of the best players and scouts in the youth competitions to pick to grab the young players early, for cheaper and potential re-sale values are massive.

Investing the time and effort in to doing this correctly can help compensate for what is at the moment a terrible system of bringing youth in from academies in which you have little control of. Completing your own recruitment from around the world will bring a lot of benefits and start to build up your sides moneyball success.

3. Develop your players

Developing players yourself is always going to be the cheapest way to find success. Look at Everton who consistently hit a top 10 without the cash resources of the clubs around them. Rooney, Rodwell, Vaughan and Osman have all been key parts to Everton’s success.

Paying close attention inside your club and creating a clear route from Under 18 team to First team can be a powerful thing. You can build that team that will replace the next or sell for a profit.

Bringing in the best coaches, putting together training schedules that will develop players in the correct way and putting together that scouting network can be a very rewarding activity when your own generations come through. It can often be too easy in Football Manager just to splash the cash on buying the best player in the game and running with it and ignoring the youth team you have at your disposal.

4. Every player has a price

Would this be a moneyball discussion without mentioning Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s book Soccernomics? Well no! The most interesting and widely quoted of their 12 rules to the transfer market. Two I would like to point out though here are, ‘make sure you have a replacement for your best players’ and ‘every player has a price’.

You have got your scouting network bringing those players of the future, but to make sure that you are going to be able to bring a player to come into the first team if/when needed. That means then you can take that unbeatable offer that comes in for your star striker. You want to make a profit, you want to create a sustainable side that spends less then it makes. The profits you make on building up players will be a big part of this.

5. Win!

The whole strategic approach is not to make money but to ‘Football Manage’, it is to be successful on the pitch. The two go hand in hand, success should offer bigger profits, bigger profits should offer bigger success. So it is important to invest and improve your first team as much as possible before you look to concentrate on other areas of your squad.

Lyon’s business strategy is to win the Champions League in the next few years, because it is the next step in their commercial gains. Liverpool are investing heavily to get back into the Champions League because that is where the money is to take the club forward and back on track.

But most of all what the moneyball approach is is a holistic approach that should encompass all parts of the Football Management and for that reason should be embraced in creating a gaming experience which is much more enjoyable and exploits the game itself to it’s full potential.

This post is by Thomas Levin, you can find more of his work at FM Pundit and his real football blog Touchline Shouts.

Go as an obscure or lower league team

An obvious one, but many people usually stick to the bigger teams on the game, I will admit I am one of these people. Going as a lower league team can be difficult but it is also a great challenge. The joy you get when you bring a club from nothing to domination is a great feeling. It will be a long game with a lot of ups and downs but stick with it and I can guarantee you will enjoy it. Check out How to cheat financially in the lower leagues for a good lower league tip and http://www.fmstory.com which is a great lower league story written by fellow blogger Lye.

Set yourself a challenge

Setting yourself goals before you start your career is a good way to make sure you stay determined. You have the mind and power to give yourself any type of challenge, however ridiculous it is. From getting Barnet to champions league glory, or like me winning a competition with a team from each country. It can turn out to be a lot of fun and help keep you focused.

Use the editor

The editor is an extremely powerful tool, and it’s under used. Spice up your game by creating your own database and doing whatever you want with it. Mixing up players, competitions, or creating your own club can be a good boredom killer and keep you interested in FM2010.

Downloads

The Football Manager 2010 community is amazing and we should be lucky to have some of the people we do participating. Many fans are creating there own fantasy databases and these are a good way to keep you interested. FM-View released a Bayern Munich Legends databse last week which I downloaded and tried out, it is a great idea and if it was not for my challenge and the blog I would definitely be playing a proper save with it. Check out http://www.sortitoutsi.net/forum/forum/122-custom-databases/ where you can find a whole load of cool databases for FM2010.

Graphics

You may not think so, but just changing the appearance of Football Manager 2010 can do a lot of good. Sometimes when I am lacking inspiration, I change the skin or install some facepacks to brighten up my game and give myself a change of scenery. Two blog posts that can get you started 60,000 Image Facepack and 5 of the best Football Manager Skins

Football Manager 2010 Time Machine

The Football Manager 2010 Time Machine I created is a good way to fast forward years in the game. The first season in my opinion is the worst and seems to drag on and on. The time machine allows you to start a game from 2010-2025 in England, Spain, Italy and Germany. I will be looking to add more countries to this list, including France which will be available to download tonight. Read more about the time machine and downloads here.

Get Involved!

If you have simply had enough of Football Manager for the moment, have  look around the FM Community. There are some great fansites out there with amazing discussion forums where you can get involved and chat about Football Manager 2010 with other fans of the game. My person favourites are FM-View, Los Wonderkids, Football Manager Fanboys, FM-Britain and of course the official Sports Interactive Forums.

There is nothing wrong with being bored in FM2010, it happens to me all the time on every version, and sometimes little changes to the game or doing something different can spice things up for us and rekindle our love for the game!

Firstly, if you are wondering what a regen is, they are the players that are generated through out your Football Manager save so that there is never a shortage of players. When the old players retire, new players must come through the youth academies etc in the game to make sure there is no player shortage, and if you get far enough in the game every play will be a regen/’made-up’ player.

Anyways, I found the creation dates interesting because it will allow me to know the dates of certain countries creations, so in future on a certain day in my game I can search for the regen’s (u16′s) from that country to try to find a hidden gem or wonderkid before anybody else does. A pretty useful piece of information if you, like me are one that is always on the hunt for the next generation of players and enjoy developing them from a young age.  The regen creation dates are as folllows:

January 1 Brazil, Chile
January 5 Rep. Ireland, Iceland
January 7 Finland
January 10 Colombia
January 15 Africa (except South Africa)
January 20 Norway
January 28 Peru
February 14 Belarus
June 7 Baltic States, Georgia, Bosnia, Cyprus, Armenia, Montenegro, Albania
June 20 Germany, Ukraine, Portugal, France, Turkey, Israel, Australia, Scotland, Hungary, Croatia, N.Ireland, Greece, Switzerland
June 24 England, Austria
June 29 Slovakia
June 30 Italy, Czech Rep, Poland
July 1 Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia
July 7 Denmark, Holland
July 10 Serbia, Spain
July 15 South Africa
July 20 Mexico
August 1 Argentina, Uruguay
September 19 North/Central America & Caribbean, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Paraguay
December 9 Japan, Middle East
December 27 Russia, USA, China, Sweden

Hopefully this information will be of good use to you, I am hoping it can help me in my current save to bring in some amazing wonderkids!!

• A copy of FM(obviously)
• An internet connection
• Hamachi, which can be downloaded here – https://secure.logmein.com/US/products/hamachi2/download.aspx

NOTE: Both of you will need to have the same patch installed, eg If you want to play on Patch 10.2, then you will both need it.

Step One

Decide which one of you is going to be hosting the game. The person that is hosting needs to start a new game using a patch both of you have, and do the normal FM steps to creating a game depending on what countries you want loaded. The person hosting also needs to go into preferences -> network and tick the box that says ‘Run as Server’

Step Two

Install Hamachi and once you have loaded it up click the power/on button:

Step Three

If you have going to be hosting the online game, then you will need to click the network tab at the top and click ‘Create a New Network’, a box will now appear where you will have to put in a unique ID and password. If you are joining your friend who is hosting the network, you need to click network tab and click ‘Join Existing Network’ and enter the id and password your friend used.

Step Four

Ok so at this stage the host has started a new game in FM and waiting, created a network on hamachi and the other person(s) have joined the hamachi network. The last step is for the person who is joining the network to load up FM, and go to ‘Join Network Game’ on the home FM2010 screen. Next the person should click join other server in the corner, and enter the ip address of the host THAT IS DISPLAYED ON THE HOSTS HAMACHI.

Step Five

Once the person has entered the hamachi IP of the host, they should be entered into the hosts game and ready to create a new manager and pick a team, so my final step is enjoy the network game, have fun and remember to Play, Win and Rub It In (Thought I would add in the Football Manager Live slogan there )