Football Manager 2023

The previous game in the series that I played was 2020, so I am comparing it to that version. I am aware some of these features were in the previous versions. I put many hours into FM 2016, and 2020 over a few years, managing the majority of the teams in the Premier League, and a couple of teams in Europe.

Since it's a game of football, it's not got a great scope for major changes, other than a few rule changes (like the 5 substitution rule), an updated roster, new aesthetic, and tweaks to the match engine. So once you get used to any new menus, or new layout for menus - it's really business as usual. There are some cool features though, although some of the ones that are new to me are from last year. Other people complain that there's not much new this year, which is why I'd recommend buying the game every couple of years.

This year, they have the official licence for the UEFA cups and Champions league which mainly comes down to the official tournament name, a different UI colour scheme, and logos.

The default colour scheme is a nice purple colour, but you can download your own skins to dramatically change the look. You have to download facepacks, team logos, and kits if you want to see the official images on the appropriate screens.

When you create a tactic, you choose an overall philosophy such as “Vertical Tiki Taka”, "Fluid Counter Attack" which gives you a good description of what you are trying to achieve. You select a formation, with a few options being presented to you as appropriate to the philosophy. You can make adjustments to the individual player roles, or make tweaks to the style which is composed of three sections: “In Possession”, “In Transition” and “Out Of Possession”.

It can be a bit confusing what some of the individual options actually mean, and can be hard to visualise the changes since you need to analyse your tactic over several games to see how well it performs when your players are familiar with it, and test it out against a range of teams.

One confusing aspect is that you can have a high/low defensive line, but then there's instructions to Step Up More/Drop Off More (people say this has replaced the Play Offside option in previous games), as well as the defenders having roles that decide if they should push up or drop: "stopper"/"cover", as well as different pressing and tackling options which will involve running towards the player with the ball. It's unclear if some of these instructions contradict, or if they change behaviour in specific scenarios.

The player roles have some standard/obvious ones like Wing Back, Centre Back, but there's some fancier named ones such as the Mezzala, Carrilero, or Raumdeuter. You are shown a short animation to illustrate how these roles should behave with and without the ball.

Over time, the tactic screen shows chemistry between players in the form of a solid line. It shows background colours from red to green to show coverage of that position - i.e. if you have a player that is set to an Attacking role, and the player behind him is on Defense; and then the space between them might show as red, because no one will occupy that area. It also is affected by the player’s suitability for that role, so playing players out of position won’t give you good influence in that area of the pitch. The tactics screen also has some bullet-point “pros and cons” of your tactic.

I think it was in last year’s version that the percentage to show fatigue was switched out with a heart icon. It works the same as before, just a bit more abstract. It seems like a random change when the players attributes are also fixed numbers and you could also say this system should also be switched out for something a bit more subjective.

I think chemistry has always been important, but there's been a greater focus on it over the last few years, and it even has its own page; Dynamics. This can show you which squad members have formed friendship groups and who has influence. If you sell an influential player, then you are likely to cause disruption within the squad, and also annoy the fans.

This year, the scouting rating has changed from numerical to alphabet but I feel the recommendations are a bit odd. I've had plenty of A or A* recommendations for players who are 32, but then there may be a youngster who definitely has the potential to match them and they may get a C. I think there are quite a few aspects that go into this calculation, so the feasibility and wage demands can sway this a bit too much I think.

In real life, over the last few years, transfer fees have skyrocketed, and so player values have increased within the game. In FM20, I felt the old players were overvalued given how quickly they declined in the game. I know players like 34 year old Benzema are still at the top of their game, but are they really worth £100m? Even fairly standard players are suggested to be worth £30m. I know Lewandowski was bought by Barcelona for £50m, but that's generally considered a high and risky signing with no return on investment other than short term guaranteed goals.

This year, I think the agents are a bit more demanding with the fees, so you will be paying more for agent fees and signing on fees. There's a few different types of bonuses you can give players too, so there is one for assists, and "combined goals and assists". Before you even offer a contract, you now are recommended to talk to their agent to gauge their interest. You can see what range of wage and expected playing time they will demand, before offering the contract. You can often get their demands down slightly by telling them it is too much.

When you renew your contract with the club, you will agree with a 5 year plan with the board to show the ambition of the club. Maybe you are expecting to survive relegation this year, but want to progress to a Mid Table team in the coming years? They also may have a philosophy like they want you to adopt attacking football, or sign youth players to develop into first team regulars. I think it’s a good feature and realistically captures the culture of certain clubs, yet it makes it restrictive if you want to play the game your way. For this year, there is a stronger emphasis on supporters expectations, with some clubs fans having more influence than others. I don't think it has that much effect on if you get sacked or not because if you are annoying the fans due to poor performance, the board are also going to be annoyed too. It’s not like they really have different opinions is it?

You can define a Code of Conduct which auto-fines players that meet that criteria, rather than manually deciding as these events happen. So accumulating yellow cards, red cards, missing training etc can result in consistent, and automatic fines.

When you subscribe to teams/players/competitions, not only can you receive mail in your inbox about them, but there is a social media, Twitter-style feed. It’s actually a decent implementation and not too cringey, and I liked that when they were talking about a goal, there was sometimes a link to see a replay of the goal. You see a lot of transfer speculation on this page which can give you hints of realistic transfers to go for, or to prompt you to make your move to make a signing before he moves elsewhere.

When the game is loading, you are shown your calendar to easily see upcoming games for all squads (1st team, Reserve, Under 19’s), but can also see your training schedules. I really like this idea as it gives you good visibility on how to manage your squad’s fitness.

Physios give you “Potential injury risks” based on player conditioning and inform you about players returning from injury and how much you should play them. They will also tell you about potential permanent attribute decreases. Many people seem to complain about the number of injuries, but I didn't experience this. I seemed to encounter loads of niggly injuries, just 1-3 days, whereas major injuries seemed more of a rarity.

If you have influential players, it is often good to assign them, alongside a few younger players in a Mentoring Group. You need to group 3 or more players and they can all learn from each other, depending on their Influence, and presumably personality type (this seemed a major influence in previous games). This can help improve attributes but also transfer “Player Traits”. Players must exist in the same squad to be in the mentoring group.

Although the graphics of the match engine still look fairly primitive for today's standards, they are better than before, and there's improved animations. I noticed lobbed shots, and crosses from more central positions (which is also something FIFA improved with the outside-foot cross). There's more rebounds off the keeper. I saw some interesting goals where players would quickly pounce on rebounds off any player. Players seem to put a lot more noticeable spin on the ball at times, which leads to some fantastic crossing, and amazing long range shots.

The pre-match, half-time, full-time team-talks are still simplistic. Instead of choosing a mood like "aggressive", "calm" etc., you now choose body language. I reckon it will be equivalent though e.g. "Aggressive" tone vs "Point Finger" or even "Throw water bottle".


Players like to complain if they are underpaid. When offering long contracts, I always ensure there is a yearly increase included, or an increase after a certain amount of games to try to scale their wage as they develop. This should stop them asking for a new contract only a year or 2 into their deal. You can often agree to start the new contract at the end of the year which is useful for delaying their wage increase to save you money and keep them happy for longer..

The interaction with the media seems to be presented in a more dramatic way with questions coming from different reporters, and you are told your relationship with each one. Fundamentally, I think it still comes down to the same stock responses which don’t seem to matter (well, as long as you don’t publicly criticise someone), and so you will blindly click or just delegate to your assistant manager.

The graphs presented in the Data Hub are quite interesting but then I didn't really know how to act on them. With different tactical styles available, if you see that your midfield has a "low number of passes, but high accuracy", is that a bad thing compared to "high number of passes, high accuracy" or "high number of passes, low accuracy"? - Higher numbers might sound good, but if they are just making simple, short passes; that is only good if you wanted them to play simple, controlling football. If you are completing a low amount of crosses, what is the solution? Play with more strikers? get more players to make forward runs? slow the tempo down? buy players with higher crossing ability? It might not be a problem at all if you don't intend to play wide and are creating enough chances via other means.

At the end of the season, you are given a Summary of how you did, which now includes a timeline with key events. It's a nice way of reminiscing over the season, and even previous seasons.

There’s a report titled "GOAL50: The best 50 players in the world" which shows you the top players. If you are playing as one of the big teams, it is good to see how many players you have here, and it gives you ideas of who to sign.

I noticed that the game saves quicker than previous instalments. I usually play 3 seasons before starting again, so no idea if this scales well as you play 10 or so seasons.

I think most people will already know if they want an iteration of the FM series or not. I’ll need to invest hundreds of hours to experiment with the tactics to really understand the match engine tweaks, but from what I have seen over 5 seasons, it’s a definite improvement. Since I’ve played close to 100 hours now, it’s great value for money, even if people do moan about the price increases in recent years. I find it’s the perfect game to play while you have Youtube videos in Picture In Picture mode.