Championship Manager 01/02

I've put more hours into Championship Manager, in it's various guises, than any other game I've ever played. It's always been the definitive football management game in my eyes, and is still being regularly updated. However, in recent times, I've sometimes felt that some of the improvements and added features being put in have digressed from what always made the series great. The core strength of the Championship Manager series for me was always the football side of things - arranging your tactics, playing the match, trying to improve your squad etc etc.

Feedback

Although the football side of things has become much more complex, with each player having several times more attributes than the early version, the tactics system being much more complicated etc, there is almost NO extra feedback given to the player to tell him how this is working.

This makes the game much more difficult to understand. In real life, you can tinker with tactics, and watch how the changes work - does setting your two central defenders to man mark leave you open to midfielders running from deep, or does the marking compensate by taking the opposing two strikers out of the game? Are your fullbacks being caught out of position?

Problems with your team (during matches) can occur because of three main things

The players. This can be because they are not good enough, or they aren't capable of playing in the role that you have selected for them (tactically, not positionally).

The tactics. This can be a failure in the tactic itself (leaving too large a gap between the midfield and defence, not supporting the attackers enough etc), or a failure of the players to make those tactics work.

The opposition. This can be either the opposition's tactics, or the players being superior to your own.

This gives you a lot of variables as to where your problems lie. However, in Championship Manager you get so little feedback it is very difficult to see where the actual problem lies. You can see things like % pass completed, tackles made, headers won etc, but that still doesn't allow you to understand how to correct it. If a player's pass completion is low, is that because your tactics are poor, not giving him a decent pass to make? Is the player not good enough at passing? Are the opposition better at intercepting balls? Does the pass completion percentage even matter as it gives you no information as to what was being attempted? Does your team cause more problems playing the long ball game, or is short passing more dangerous.

These problems are compounded by the fact that the game's match engine may have flaws in it to mean that things that work in real life don't work in game and visa versa. For example, in earlier versions, the short passing game was "broken". Any team was far more successful playing the long ball game, and even big teams got relegated playing the short passing game. Although I doubt that the latest versions have such obvious flaws, I would be willing to bet that there are some areas that have benefits or flaws that mean that following real life examples does not work as intended.

In order to allow you to successfully tinker with your team, I think there needs to be a vast amount of more useful feedback, and opportunities for feedback given during the course of the game.

For example:

After each game, you could get a report as to how a player did, both in terms of his own play, and his part in the tactical system. This could be done in the style of the coaches report you can get on any of the players, but in added detail. This would be in addition to an overall team report.

Of course, it might be the case that the match engine doesn't have enough detail in it to be able to give back this information. If this is the case, then SOME information still needs to be returned.

All this could be supplemented by being able to have training match reports too, so you can tinker with tactics on the training pitch instead of your only chance being the matches.

Training

It would be useful to be able to put the players through some practical training to have a better idea as to their abilities in some of the hidden stats. For example, you could set a bunch of people to do penalties, and then get an idea from a coach as to who is the best one etc.

As listed in the feedback section too, it would be nice to be able to test out tactics too - trying them out against an opposing tactic (so you could use a scout to look at an opponent's usual tactic, and then try yours against it in a training session.

Player Statistics

(in these search examples, I'm using a game with hidden stats turned on, with 4632 players. So the actual number in these searches would be higher as some players would fulfill the search requirements if I knew their stats)

Each player is rated in a number of catagories, with 1 being absolutely hopeless, and 20 being the best possible. In my mind, the game doles out incredible statistics far too easily - starting as Barnet in the Conference division, one of my players has no less than SIX statistics above 15, and another has 3 of 18 or more, including 19 in technique! A character with 20 is as good as anyone in the world, so what we are saying that Zidane, Figo, Ronaldo and a bloke from the conference division have similar a similar level of technique. Which seems wrong to me. Incidentally, 19 technique gives him the same level as Saviola, Michael Owen, Geoff Pitcher, Mark Robins and Ronnie Wallwork. Of course, to get 20 tecnique is harder. You have to be the likes of Michael Barron or Mark Burke (whaddya mean you've never heard of them?).

In case you haven't got my point, I'm just suggesting that high statistics are given out far too easily. This brings me neatly on to my second problem with player stats.

Too many players are brilliant at too many things.

Hundreds of players have more than 15 in over half their statistics. More than half the players in the game (2440) have 10 in over half their statistics. Remember, a bunch of these statistics are for goalkeepers too, so the number which have 15 or more in more than half their useable stats is much higher. In my mind, a 15 should be a highly impressive stat, and the number of players who have 15 or more in a large number of stats should be world stars.

You may think I'm overstressing this, but I think players values are diluted by their all round ability. I have no problems with some players being brilliant in some areas, but most players (even the brilliant ones) are only good in a few areas. Is Jaap Staam really one of the best finishers in the world? Is Harry Kewell as good a tackler as Jamie Carragher and Chris Riggott? The fact that so few players are good in a lot of areas is why we have "utility" players, who are good all rounders (such as Jamie Carragher), and why we praise the likes of Roy Keane, Patrick Viera and Steven Gerrard, because they can do pretty much everything.

To have an attacker who can also defend (or visa versa) is a very rare trait - it's one of the reasons that Emile Heskey is liked by so many managers - and in the game too, it should be rare. Not many attackers are good with head AND feet, and again these should be prized. Championship Manager likes to make players good at lots of things, and removes some of the decisions that a real life manager has to make.

So, spread the stats out a little, even amoungst the greats - don't be scared to give very low attributes in certain areas as it makes someone with an average stat in that area that much more useful.

Media

Dealing with the media is relatively new to the Championship Manager series, and I feel it seems rather half implemented. At the moment you sometimes get asked a relatively simple question, and answering positively never seems to have a bad effect. If you want to implement dealing with the media, I think it needs to be something that requires more thought. In all of the times I've answered a media question, I've never had a comeback from defending my player, saying we can win the league, and praising a player. Surely it should be more difficult than that? Maybe praising a player upsets others if that player hasn't done that well. Give me more responses. If a paper is praising a player, let me say that it's because he's part of a great team. Saying that the player has a lot to learn always makes them unhappy, so who answers that?

So far, the media implementation feels like it was added because someone thought it sounded like a good idea, but hasn't been thought through enough to provide an added challenge. I like the idea, but I think it needs more work.

Money

This is quite a big issue with Championship Manager, as it has such a big effect on the game. However, the problem with money comes down to a single statement.

Money is too plentiful.

Although money can be tight in the very lowest division, it's usually very easy to pick up, both by selling players, but also because costs seem to be low.

There are a number of reasons for this, some of which would be very easy to fix. But the single biggest contributor is wages.

Wages for players are fine in the main. If you want to get a top class talent, you have to pay a large sum in wages. In fact, as the years progress, the wages can become too top heavy, with youth players demanding 60k a week to sign (and NOT the Michael Owens of the world either). But there is still a problem with player wages, mainly due to the players happiness to just stick with what they have got.

In earlier versions of Championship Manager, when you got promoted, a large proportion of the squad decided that they deserved a pay rise, and would immediately become unhappy with their current contracts. This meant that the player had to up the contracts on all the important players to prevent them requesting transfers. This no longer happens, and now it is unusual for a player to request a pay rise (except for the beginning of the game).

Although this may seem to be a small issue, it does mean that you can sign a player in the second division for 1k a week, and a couple of seasons later he can be a regular in the Premier League, still on the 1k a week.

Another point is that players don't take into account what others earn. If your star players, marked as "indispensable", are on 5k a week, and you sign a player as back up for the first team on 30k a week, nobody says a word. In my opinion, players should take all this into account. Although this would assume that players know how much each is earning, I don't think it would be entirely unreasonable, especially given the prevalence of agents within the game. Certainly in real life clubs are very worried about breaking pay structures (or at least the ones that want to stay financially healthy are), and this is largely due to the effect that hiring an expensive player has on the rest of the playing staff.

This is mainly true of players within a particular club, but it's also true between clubs. If a player thinks he can earn 100k a week at a different club, he's unlikely to remain happy if you pay him 10k a week. Some players might be loyal enough, but the majority will not just sit there happily; they will demand a pay rise or a transfer.

To give a real game example, in my current game, my highest earner earns 27k a week. My second highest earner earns 6k a week. The highest earner is a backup for my second highest earner.