Football Manager 2007

[Farmer Reil]

It had better be.

Kerpwnsmashing Arsenal, then losing to Watford, is the suck.

[Lineker]

Pinned, perhaps?

[Summers]

Er... why?

[Big Red Fury]

Oh my sweet God. Takeovers and the ability to move into new stadiums if you get big enough means that I need new shorts.

[Lineker]

Err... why not?

I miss having an FM thread pinned. Those were the days.

[Summers]

Why would you seriously pin a thread for a game no one owns yet..?

[Lineker]

Demo will be out soon, and it's a discussion topic.

Whatever, just a thought. It's bound to be pinned sooner or later, so why not while people discuss and contemplate it?

[Buford Ripley]

Pre-emptive pinning for when the game comes out, maybe?

[Summers]

Look how huge the other thread was before it got pinned, and really, just as many people will still be playing the old game for the first few weeks/months.

[ONO]

Demo will be out soon, and it's a discussion topic.

Whatever, just a thought. It's bound to be pinned sooner or later, so why not while people discuss and contemplate it?

[gunnar hendershow]

This game will be the reason I fail everything in school.

[Big Red Fury]

Demo will be out soon, and it's a discussion topic.

Whatever, just a thought. It's bound to be pinned sooner or later, so why not while people discuss and contemplate it?

Well lets leave it till then and stop arguing for the sake of it.

Oh my sweet God. Takeovers and the ability to move into new stadiums if you get big enough means that I need new shorts.

[Dan]

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

FM2007 Blog part 4 of many - the boardroom

Current mood: busy

Today's new features blog deals with the boardroom, and is the first of 5 new features blogs this week – a full round up, with screenshots, will also appear on our website at www.sigames.com on Friday.

THE BOARDROOM

The relationship between a manager and the board at a club is very important, and your link between the football and commercial world, and whereas some games in the genre decide to give you the option to set hot dog prices (which, let's be honest, has about as much to do with the job of being a football manager as forcing the user to cut the grass and painting the lines on the pitch before each match), this is an area that we leave to the chairman and chief executive.

However, a true manager still wants to know what's going on, and help influence it in some ways, whilst the board take a lot more care over their clubs now.

As well as the previously mentioned limiting of staff (not just scouts, but coaches too), if someone offers a transfer offer too good to be true, the board may well accept over your head. They also might limit the amount of wages you can offer a player who they haven't heard of.

They are nicer in other areas though. If they are running out of cash, losing interest in the club or realise it's too big a job for them, they might now invite people to make offers for the club, which could lead to a takeover. Different clubs will get offers from different groups, ranging from supporters clubs through to massive investment from abroad, so you could find your transfer budget tripled overnight, or the same shoestring budgets with more enthusiastic help from the board. Different chairmen have different personalities, of course, so some might not be happy with mid table obscurity, but it brings different challenges to the game. Or even end up with the new board giving you the sack as they appoint their own manager!

One of the most requested features on the forums over the last couple of years has been that of stadium moves. As we try to model stadiums as accurately as we are allowed, many are set to not being able to be expanded due to a lack of available planning permission, just like in real life, so there were occasions when mighty FM managers took their clubs from obscurity to the top division to find that they couldn't get any more fans into the ground. Now, if you've got enough money in the bank, or if the board are confident of paying off any debts that are taken on via the increased amount of fans in the stadium, they will build a new shiny ground for the team to move into.

You can also request relationships with feeder clubs, but that's a whole new section in itself, and we'll save that one for Friday I think…

[King Ellis]

No, no, no. Takeovers is cheating.

Actually though I am really looking forward to this because I can just see someone like Reily building up a team for like five years but get fuck all money from the board so he quits in frustration. Then 6 months later they get taken over and the new boss gets 50m.

That or the board will want to move and say "Well, have fun with this £600m loan."

[Guest Koupa Troopa]

ANYTHING NEW IN 2007 THAT WASN'T IN 99/00 IS CHEATING.

Right Tom?

[Guest muddatrucker]

I can't wait to have Real Madrid as my feeder team.

[Big Red Fury]

Today blogs is about the youth revamp that is coming in Football Manager 2007. A full round up of this weeks blog, with screenshots, will appear on Friday at our website at www.sigames.com

Youth Revamp

Youth teams in Football Manager and Sports Interactive titles have been very well served over the years by a system called "regens". This was, basically, the regeneration of players as they retired, and had evolved massively over the years to the point where it couldn't be taken any further. But it still wasn't perfect.

So, out go "regens". And in comes a whole new system of youth player generation, and database stability. It's internal codename is "Fred" because if it had a more descriptive name it would give far too many trade secrets away, but what it means is a lot more youth players in the game and a system much more akin to that of real life, using real life rules, so youth teams at active clubs should always be well populated with players. Just like real life, only a small proportion of these players will "make it" into top players, with many dropping down the leagues into non-league obscurity, but each year your youth team (if your club has one) will be topped up with new players and if you don't have what we deem "enough" at the starting point of the game, you'll be given more in the first couple of days of the game starting.

Obviously, as with everything in our games, all areas of the game are linked, so if you have poor youth facilities, you will be less likely to find the next world superstar, but that doesn't mean that you can't, just that it's less likely. Some years you might get a whole heap of potential first team players, some you might get none, but the stability of the database over the long term stays the same, so you shouldn't find that in 2020 players in the third division are better than the international players of today.

We've also used real world contract rules to ensure that you can offer players "pre-contracts" to try and save your players being snapped up for next to nothing by bigger clubs as has happened on previous games. As long as you're on the ball and keeping a close eye on your youngster or, if you trust them enough, letting one of your staff looking after the youth contracts, you should never lose a potential superstar for nothing again.

It's also important that you nurture your young talent to get the best out of them. And to do this, you need to interact with the players, but there's more info on that coming on Thursday!

Cheers

Miles

[Farmer Reil]

so you shouldn't find that in 2020 players in the third division are better than the international players of today.

[therockbox]

As well as the previously mentioned limiting of staff (not just scouts, but coaches too), if someone offers a transfer offer too good to be true, the board may well accept over your head. They also might limit the amount of wages you can offer a player who they haven't heard of.

[Guest muddatrucker]

So can someone translate how the youth setup is different that sounded like the exact same thing that happens now, whats the difference?

My youth team is shite regardless, I've taken to stealing youngsters from Spain.