The pettiest things people have done in their Football Manager save

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Football Manager is the easiest game to be ridiculously petty on. We’re basically playing God with virtual characters, and if we want to ruin their lives, it’s incredibly easy to do so. Honestly, the game actively encourages it. You can hoover up all the best strikers in the game, ruin the lives of underrated wonderkids or just become an absolute demon of the sport.

In FM, AI interactions are a joke, and players constantly drive you up the wall. Star strikers complain about wanting to move to bigger clubs. Backup right-backs whine about not getting enough game time. Opposition managers accuse you of being a fraud in every press conference. It takes the patience of a saint not to want to banish these virtual nuisances into oblivion and make them wish they’d never crossed paths with your computer screen.

Over the years, I’ve come across plenty of petty Football Manager stories, and they’re all absolutely brilliant. Here are some of the best examples of players snapping and taking their grudges to the next level.

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Loaned out players to hurt an ex-wonderkid

This one’s brutal. A player had a wonderkid who desperately wanted to leave. Fair enough, right? But when the wonderkid joined another team in a lower league, his former manager decided to ruin his life. He loaned out three players in the same position to the wonderkid’s new club, ensuring the poor guy didn’t get any playing time.

This went on for three seasons. By the end, the wonderkid had to leave the continent completely. And what did he do to deserve this? Not much, honestly. He wanted more game time and was willing to drop a level to get it. In real life, that’s admirable. But in Football Manager, it’s apparently a good enough reason to seek revenge.


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Revenge on a player that refused to be sold

From a player desperate to leave to one who was desperate to stay: this story involves Ashley Barnes, the quintessential Championship striker. He outright refused to leave the club in one save, so his manager decided to make his life miserable.

Ashley was banished to the under-21s, forced into double-intensity training, and retrained as a Libero, with an added focus on Long Throws. Yes, you read that right—Long Throws. On the bright side, if Tony Pulis ever comes calling, Ashley will be perfectly prepared for the most niche footballing role imaginable.

Needless injections

This one is genuinely a bit evil. A man had a troublemaker in his squad—a guy who complained about everything and tanked morale. So, when this player got injured, his manager gave him injections… not to get him back on the pitch, but to prolong his suffering.

That’s right. The manager had no intention of playing him. He just wanted to keep him in pain. It’s dark when you think about it. How many injections would it take before the player realized his manager was quietly torturing him?

Messing with family

This one might be the most diabolical of all. When Derby County manager Paul Warne started talking trash about his team, a Football Manager player decided to take revenge in the most ridiculous way possible.

He signed Paul Warne’s son on a free transfer from Lowestoft. The plan? To “ruin his already not promising career.” I don’t know if that means banishing him to the reserves, retraining him as a goalkeeper, or breaking his legs with a baseball bat, but whatever it is, I’m scared to find out.

Cup knockout

We’ve all been there on Football Manager. You lose a game to a ridiculous error and immediately see red. Some of us silently seethe, while others unleash a storm of expletives. But Ethan, a Football Manager player of action, took things further.

When one of his defenders committed an error that got them knocked out of a cup, he terminated the defender’s contract immediately after the game. Imagine making a mistake at work and then coming home to find out you’ve been fired—and the contract you thought you had doesn’t even exist anymore. I’d say Jack Simpson might want to hire a lawyer.

Losing an invincible season on purpose

This one is the ultimate act of pettiness. A player was on the verge of completing an undefeated league season with Borussia Dortmund—an incredible achievement. All they needed was to avoid losing the final game of the season against Bayer Leverkusen.

But instead, they deliberately lost the match to make sure Bayern Munich didn’t qualify for the Champions League. The fallout? A mass exodus of players that summer. Some of them ended up signing for Bayern, and to twist the knife even further, the player then signed a few back—despite not even needing them.

They missed out on an invincible season, but hey, they absolutely ruined Bayern’s next campaign. They may have lost the battle, but they definitely won the war.

The end of pettiness we can all aspire to

So there you have it: some of the pettiest things people have done on Football Manager. It turns out the Football Manager community are absolute masters of grudge-holding and revenge plots.

What about you? Have you ever done anything petty on Football Manager? Anything that could rival these evil tales? Let me know in the comments!

About the Author

William Reid

William is the admin of Out of Context Football Manager, an X account that focuses on FM news. He's worked for LADbible Group and is VG's resident FM expert.