by MaddFM.
Let’s face it - we are all trying to break Football Manager. Not necessarily in a malicious or somewhat dishonest way (well, most of us at least), but rather that we as Football Manager fanatics are constantly on a quest to find a way to outsmart the game; to find gaps in terms of scouting, tactics, match engine and general FM gameplay as a way of proving that you are in fact the shrewdest Football Manager of them all through your ingenuity and astuteness in your handling of the game.
There is of course no simple way of doing this, and the sheer amount of code, complex algorithms and intertwined interdependencies mean there is no easy way to outsmart the game - however there are certain aspects that can help you to capitalise on how the game thinks and is designed to react when various factors are introduced and today we will be looking at how to best use Player Attributes when it comes to outsmarting the game and imposing a Meta approach when it comes to player recruitment, selection and deployment.
What is Meta?
The concept of Meta in gaming refers to the idea that there are specific ways/approaches to defeating a game or succeeding within a particular game’s circumstances - effectively a way of capitalising on a game’s design/structure by building a strategy designed to capitalise on it’s flaws or exploit it’s perceived strengths accordingly (often seen as the early stages of overpowering a game to the extent where it becomes “broken”).
In Football Manager terms - Meta would more commonly refer to the in-game architecture which allows for certain tactics, attributes, actions or strategies to thrive by identifying weaknesses or capitalising on factors that the game relies on heavily. We have seen this in the past with things like 3-Striker formations, Long-Throws, Near-Post Corners etc - all aspects that in-turn became overpowered and subsequently “nerfed” by Sports Interactive in subsequent updates. There is a fine line between Meta, Overpowering and effectively cheating in-game and often it is up to you in terms of how comfortable you are trying to overpower the match engine or digress from reality when it comes to your FM strategy.
To be clear - this piece is not about cheating or trying to completely overpower the game; rather it’s about using some of the tools available to maximise how specific features/dependencies work within the game environment as well as areas that can truly compliment your tactic/playing style as well as maximising how you deploy certain players to capitalise and therefore reap the benefits from their individual strengths and attributes.
1. The Goal-Scoring Centre-Half
To quote Gary Neville regarding Cristiano Ronaldo’s match-winning header against Tottenham recently - “He's just gone and headed it like a non-league centre-back”. While a bit extreme especially for someone with the aerial ability and athleticism of Ronaldo, you can see Gary’s point. Teams that have had the stereotypical big centre-half to offer an aerial threat from set-pieces have largely reaped the benefits for many years gone by, where the likes of Sergio Ramos, John Terry, Nemanja Vidic, Shane Duffy and Harry Maguire have all proven to be highly effective assets to their team from an offensive perspective as well as defensively.
Football Manager loves a big Centre-Half, and improvements to the Set-Piece creator mean that you cause all kinds of damage by deploying a big Centre-Half and strategically targeting them for Free-Kicks and Corners effectively (in my own save we saw 6’3” Mattie Pollock (Jumping Reach 17, Heading 16) win the Championship Player of the Year award after bagging 11 goals and 6 assists in one season). Naturally Virgil Van Dijk is the ideal big Meta Centre-Half standing at 6’4” with 17 Jumping Reach, 17 Strength and 18 Heading however if you are after a slightly more affordable option then I recommend 26-year-old Czech Defender Patrizio Stronati of Hungarian side Puskas Akademia. Standing at 6’4” (197m) with 17 Jumping Reach, 17 Heading, 18 Strength and 16 Bravery this man will never fear an aerial challenge and with a transfer value of £250k -£2.6m, he could prove to be a bargain if you can have him bag a few crucial goals as well as shoring things up at the back.