Football Manager 2006 Review

Midfield: The midfield is the creative hub of a team, where the spark comes from. Sure, the strikers will score the goals and get the glory, but the midfield is where it all comes together. Both the engine-room and creator of wonderful things, the midfield is where you expect to see most of the silky-skills on display.

You can now see where a player can play; no need to guess

And the new skills on display help make the game better to play, as well as providing enough additional information to assist you in planning and analysing every game, right down to the last detail. One feature that has long been requested on the official SI forums has finally been introduced, for starters: manager contracts and stats that will rise and fall depending on your skills (although increases seem arbitrary for some of them - my loyalty was down to 1, for some reason). Whilst both would seem to be fairly superficial on the surface (the stats as far as I am aware are more for show at this stage), the manager contracts have a very interesting function attached. That is, you can use contract negotiations to push for increases to your stadium capacity, or improve the training facilities, or more transfer funds. You are offered a range of transfer budgets, ranging from an improvement in the overall wage ceiling with less cash to buy players, or vice-versa, or a happy compromise. You can still request these things outside of contract negotiations, but it's nice to include them here, where you have more clout. Obviously, the more successful you have been at the club will play a huge factor in whether you get what you want or not, but it's a wonderful touch that really brings you into the game-world.

Other such additions include even more media interaction (you can now issue more general comments about teams or managers, instead of having comments being context-sensitive to your next opponents), height and weight of players (which adds even more tactical considerations - you don't want a 10-stone weakling as your hard-man midfielder, for instance), a new tutorial mode for those finding it all a little too much, and many others. Possibly the biggest change, though - and you'll know if you read our preview - is to do with training. Past iterations of the game have seen the importance - and tweak-ability - of training increase massively. Where once you would simply move a player to a schedule called Defence or Attacker, it progressed to the point where you were able to organise every day's training to an alarming degree. Even Miles Jacobson (who came up with it) never used it. That should tell you something, right?

So, with FM2006 it has been completely re-written from the ground up. Now everything is controlled by sliding bars, with it all being kept in check by the intensity of the overall schedule. It may sound strange, but it's brilliant in practice. I confess that I hated the training in FM2005. It was far too convoluted, and yet to get the best from players you did need to put some effort into sorting it out, so I can safely say that the implementation this year is the best yet, requiring little effort to set-up effective training regimes.

Attack: Every team needs goal-scorers. Whether you go for a blend of youth and experience, short and tall or pacey and intelligent, you need quality. And FM2006 provides it in spades.

From the new injury mode that lets you decide whether to give an injection to treat certain injuries, new stat screens, the ability to give half-time and full-time team talks, to an increased number of leagues you can manage in, there is enough new content to dispel cries of 'It's too similar to last year!'. Of course, one day we will get to the point where we do say that, but that day is not today.

... there is enough new content to dispel cries of 'It's too similar to last year!'

You have to hand it to SI. In every other genre there are a few 'must-have' titles, with no singular game that would cover every base. In the world of football management, you really do only need FM. Nothing else comes anywhere near to it in terms of depth, scope or intensity. Forget 3D match engines that bear little relation to your tactics, or the ability to build stadiums and fix hotdog prices. No, concentrate on what's important - feeling like a manager. And FM2006 does that. It's the most accomplished football management sim ever, without doubt. It's a game where you feel almost as bad when you lose on screen as it does when your team loses in the real world, and that is some accomplishment. It's a game where the line between success and failure is so fine it's blurred, and the payback is only in your head - you'll get no fancy FMV congratulatory screen here. It's a game where you define your own goals, and have to work hard to achieve them. To put it simply, it has the elusive X-factor. And so it should be left to the manager to give us his informed opinion on the way his team is prepared for the long season ahead:

"I've looked at my squad, and those of the opposition, and can safely say that we are going to walk it this year. Again."

Seems about right to me.