I’m not talking about the real obvious players like Bojan, Pato and Aguero, I’m talking about the kids who are a few years off appearing on a TV screens playing for the likes of Liverpool, Man Utd, Real Madrid etc

I’ll start with a few:

• Luc Castaignos (Feyenoord)
• Marco Fossati (Inter)
• Christopher Buchtmann (Liverpool)
• Marc Muniesa (Barcelona)
• Janick Kamber (Basel)
• Deniz Herber (St. Pauli)

There are no prizes for guessing correctly but you’ll get that warm glow knowing you know everything.

So come on, who will be the future stars and wonderkids of Football Manager 2010?

Don’t get me wrong I like FM09 but there is room for improvement.  Some things I’d like to see in the next version of Football Manager, Football Manager 2010:

• I’d like to be able to ’shout’ (you know what I mean) instructions during the game to specific players while they are playing
• Maybe be able to start as a youth/reserve team manager and work your way through the ranks of the club
• Improve the 3D
• Rework the tactics screens

I know Sports Interactive like to know what us fans would like to see in the next installment of Football Manager (Football Manager 2010) so what do you guys think?

Once we get a decent amount of comments I’ll let the guys at Sports Interactive know.

Starting with the member of your coaching team I find most important, is the assistant manager. Your assistant manager will know the squad better than any other member of the coaching team and is also vital for finding out important information. Requesting a team report early on (after the one automatically given to you), will find out areas of the team that need cover, improvement and strengthening. You assistant can also offer advice on who they believe you should sign to improve certain areas of your squad. For example, early on in my campaign as Q.P.R boss, my assistant Tim Flowers advised I sign Kevin Doyle from Reading, and he went on to be my leading goalscorer for three seasons in a row (including my first in the Premiership). Try and keep the assistant you start with, but if for some reason you lose them (Tim Flowers was mine for two seasons before being offered the Managers job at Leicester), then make sure you sign the right man for the job. You have to look for an assistant who has attributes that match yourself. For example, if you like to play attacking football, make sure your assistant has a good attacking attribute. Remember, in most cases, people will ask their assistant to give team talks and occasionally pick the team, so they have know what they’re doing. High attributes in ‘Judging Player Ability’, ‘Motivating’ and ‘Tactical Knowledge’ will make sure your assistant can step in for you when needed and do a good job. As the game goes on, your assistant will most likely become a favorite amongst fans and players quicker than you will, which is a good thing because whenever you need to call on them to help, you know they’ll do a stand up job. In past games, my assistant has been liked so much that he usually gets offered my old job when I leave for another team, but they usually always end up joining me again as my assistant at the new club.

1st Team coaches are also important, and I usually find that most teams you take over will either have no 1st team coaches, or just the one. What I like to do is look through my clubs favorite staff/icons/legends and see if any of them are now coaches so I can bring them in as my 1st team coach. This works well as players and fans alike are happy that a club favorite has returned. If you already have a club favorite in your coaching staff, then try offering them a new contract with a promotion to 1st team coach. Good attributes for a first team coach include the style of play you like to play i.e. attacking or defending and ‘Technical’, as they will be working with the team that you will be judged on.

Coaches should already be in place at your team and shouldn’t be worried about too much until further in the game. Having a good coaching team will help your training and a good balance across your first team/youth team and goalkeepers is essential. I always try and sign club favorites and former players of mine as coaches as the game goes on. This is usually because I still have players and staff members at the club who are listed as favored personnel so can be good for moral. This is exactly the same for youth coaches, goalkeeping coaches, physio’s and scouts.

All the previous information was for when you are starting off at a new club at the very beginning of the game. If during the game, you move to a new club, then depending on your status on the game and how long you were at your previous club should determine what you do next.

If you have a world class reputation and won many honors with your previous club, then when you join your new club, always try and take across your old staff. As you may have seen throughout the game via tips, staff at clubs you take over will always agree to a mutual termination of contract, so take advantage of this and save some money, whilst also bringing your old team in. I recommend keeping one or two of the old staff at the new club, as they may be a favorite for some players so them leaving could have a negative effect. Check this out before you start releasing staff from contracts.

If you were fired, or don’t have a high reputation, then the best idea would be keeping all the staff at your new job, as they will be able to give you the same help/guidance/information as you get when you start off at the beginning of the game. Only when you are quite well respected, will you be bigger than the staff at a squad and be able to bring over all your own without having too much of negative response from players.

What do you think?

This was a guest article written by James Mertz so be sure to let him know what you think!

I’ll get things started for us:

Name: Samuel Pietre
Position: AMR
Club: None
Age: 24
Value: Free

Name: Denes Rosa
Position: AMLC
Club: Wolves
Age: 31
Value: 24k

Name: Michael Gray
Position: D/WBL
Club: Wolves
Age: 34
Value: 100k

Name: Marvin Andrews
Position: CB
Club: None
Age: 32
Value: Free

Name: Jean-Joel Perrier Doumbe
Position: Right/Left Wing Back
Club: Celtic
Age:29
Value:10k to 100k

Name:Pena
Position: D/WBL
Club: Albacete
Age: 24
Value: Free

Have you got any to add? Lets see them!

To celebrate the launch of the game, SI have teamed up with talkSPORT to give fans the chance to play a whole season for free.

What’s more, those that can guide their team into the Top 25 come the end of the season will be rewarded with a 12 month free subscription!

Do you think you could cope with the egos of the likes of Ronaldo, Messi or Kaka, wheel and deal in the transfer market, and make the big decisions that could be the difference between glory or defeat for your club?

To enter the competition and find out more details, go to:

http://new.talksport.net/competitions/compdetails.asp?comp_ID=100389

Once again it’s a simple comment to win competition which gives everybody who isn’t as gifted with words as good a chance as somebody who is to win.  Although I want this one to provide worthwhile information to the thousands of daily visitors to thefootymanager.com so it will take just a little thought.

So what do I do

All you have to do to have a chance of winning is tell us who you think the most underrated players in Football Manager 2009 are in the comment box at the bottom of the page. The more information the better because it helps people looking for potential bargain buys although if you just want to drop a name in then that works just as well.

What can I win?

Well the lovely people at Sports Interactive (SI) have provided us with 3 packs of Limited Edition Football Manager Top Trumps so that is one pack for three lucky people.

I’m not a user of Top Trumps myself but I have flicked through a pack of them and they look very cool and I have looked on Google and can’t see where you can buy them so they do indeed look very limited.

When Can I enter?

Now, get posting in the comments below and I look forward to seeing what you guys have to say.

Participants can post comments until the 17th of January 2009. The comments will be closed on the 18th of January at 00:01 GMT.

In FM08 I choose to manage  England, Chelsea and Newcastle. I like many others I love signing English wonderkids (which is crucial if you’re managing England as a country) however it seems like most of the good wonderkids in FM09 are from other countries so here is a list of some of the player who have impressed me so far on FM09 and were great on FM08;

Players who are top four Premier League standard

• Billy Sharp – Sheffield United
• Ryan Taylor – Wigan
• Steven Taylor -Newcastle
• Curtis Davies – Aston Villa
• Scott Flinders- Crystal Palace
• Leighton Baines – Everton
• Giles Barnes – Derby
• Nedum Onuoha – Man City

Players who I would consider good enough to play for England

• Joe Mattock – Leicester
• Michael woods – Chelsea
• Michael Johnson – Man City
• Adam Johnson – Middlesbrough
• Victor Moses- Crystal Palace
• Paul Anderson – Nottingham City
• Scott Sinclair – Chelsea
• Matt Derbyshire -Blackburn
• Chris Taylor – Oldham

These are all of the players that I have found and would consider as wonderkids if you have any other suggestions excluding all of the obvious ones  then please comment .

There are two different versions of the demo available for PC and MAC, a ’strawberry’ and ‘vanilla’ version, with both providing half a season of gameplay. The saved games from the demo will be compatible with the full release of the game.

Vanilla Version

The vanilla version of the demo is English language only, and features the English and Scottish leagues, with no player photos or logos in order to reduce the size of the download.

Strawberry Version

How can I participate?

Well that is the easy part.  All you have to do is comment in this article what you are looking forward to most in Football Manager 2009.  It can be three words, a sentance, a paragraph it’s totally up to you. We’ll then randomly pick the winners from the comments in this thread and notify you by email if you are one of the three lucky winners!

Please notice that:

• participants can post comments until the 13th of November 2009. The comments will be closed on the 14th of November at 00:01 GMT.
• the winners will be determined by a random generator;
• make sure that you fill your e-mail in the comment field correctly, so we can contact you afterwards.

What can I Win?

Football Manager 2009’s match engine has seen more testing than ever before having been extensively beta tested in Football Manager Live for the past year.

The famous Football Manager match engine can now be viewed in full 3D with motion captured animations for the players. Sports Interactive has been working on the 3D match engine for nearly 3 years with the support of SEGA Japan’s Virtua Striker team who provided the motion capture data and some of the animations. You can now watch your matches in 3D from multiple camera angles and re-watch any part of the match by fast forwarding and rewinding the action using a new match time bar that flags the key moments in the game. The old 2D view of the match engine is still there, especially for those people whose computers aren’t powerful enough to take advantage of the 3D views.

As a result of usability testing on Football Manager 2008, this year sees widescreen support for the game for the first time, as well as lots of tweaks to the user interface for easier navigation.

Football Manager 2009 is fully updated for the new 2008/09 football season with all the latest league, club and player data, featuring over 5,000 playable clubs from over 50 countries, and around 350,000 players and staff from around the world, drawn fresh from the famous Sports Interactive database.

Sports Interactive have worked hard to reflect the greater impact the media has been having in recent years on the world of football, in the in-game dealings with the press. The game now features more news stories, more detail and greater media interaction than ever before, creating an even more realistic simulation of the football world.

When Will I Get My Prize?

Well the game is being released on the 14th November so we’ll select the winners and get the prizes sent out on that day.  You should get the game through your letterbox on the 15th (the day after release) just in time for the weekend of FM09 abuse.

So spread the word of the competition to your friends, other websites and most importantly comment yourself to be in with a shout of winning.

The competition has now closed folks so the winners will be hearing from us in the next 24 hours!

Good luck, thefootymanager.com Team!

UPDATE – Congratulations to Paul Murrey, Carl Lightfoot and Frank Keegan our competition winners.  Look out for more competitions in the near future.

Well the Fantasy Football League has been running for a couple of months now and we have a pretty impressive 47 teams in there now.

Here is the current league table as of 12/10/08.

As you can see I’m doing rubbish sitting in a shameful 26th place although there are a fair few hundred more matches to be played this season so I can confident I can make the 100 odd points I’m behind the leaders back in no time….  It’s a marathon and not a sprint after all

I have to say hats off to the guys who are sitting up at the top of the league because that is some pretty impressive scoring although the rest of the league shouldn’t be too despondent because it is more than possible to pull 50 points back on the leaders in a weekend.

I do have prizes for the top three at the end of December and the top three at the end of the season although I’m trying to sort some sponsorship for some spot prizes as well…  This is proving to be easier said than done at the minute though but I ‘m  sure I’ll get something sorted.

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