Staff Responsibilities & Backroom Advices Explained

The Definitive Guide to Football Manager Staff Responsibilities & Backroom Advices

Welcome to the definitive guide to Football Manager staff responsibilities! With the major changes to the staff responsibilities and backroom staff in Football Manager 2020, it’s appropriate to take a closer look at how you can take advantage of this comprehensive menu.

This area of Football Manager is designed to let you decide how much control you prefer within the daily management of the club and help you to delegate control of tasks and specific areas that you might not have interest or the knowledge of controlling.

Here we’ll talk about which staff are eligible for each area of responsibility, the requirements to the staff role in order to do a proper job, and the benefits of setting up the staff responsibilities and backroom advices in the best way possible yourself.

I will also break down the different departments of staff responsibilities in Football Manager, providing you with an easy table of which staff that’s available to delegate the control to, the key attributes required to take care of each specific task, a closer insight to what the task means, how to delegate control, as well as providing you with a few tips on how I set it up myself.

Overall it will be the definitive guide to Football Manager staff responsibilities and backroom advices, so keep reading to learn more about an area that often are overlooked or simply forgotten to setup at the start of a new save.

PS. You can learn more about the different staff roles of Football Manager or find the best ones for FM20 by browsing this archive.

About the Staff Responsibility Menu

The staff responsibility hub let’s you design who shall take care of every aspects of the day-to-day running of the club, whether it’s assisting you with training, scouting, deal with the media or be in charge of transfers and contract negotiations. The menu is broken down into 8 different categories which let’s you carefully select which area you’d like to have control over and which you might want to delegate away to one of your trusted staff.

You can find the Staff responsibility menu in the game by clicking;

• Staff > Responsibilities > Overview

This area of Football Manager is recommended to setup as soon after you have been welcomed to a new club or when creating your manager profile, which would be my best tip. If you have a certain preference that will be similar from save to save, setting it up while creating the manager profile means you will only need to set it up once.

By clicking yes to being experienced in Football Manager when filling out the personal details about yourself (new profile), the responsibility menu will be available to customize. From here you can easily select the different areas that you’d like to be in charge of. Your preferences regarding responsibilities you’d like to have control over will then be saved within your manager profile immediately and can be transferred from save to save.

PS. Confirming to be experience also means that the Induction guides will be kept to a minimum. Great if you feel you’re familiar within the scouting, tactics, medical or development screen.

Let us delve into the wonders of the Football Manager staff responsibilities and backroom advice screen to help you on your way to become a more successful manager.

Quick Overview of the Different Staff Roles

Your backroom staff (e.g. medical -, scouting and coaching team) is available for you to both ease your job, make your ideas about how to play good football come through to the players, assists you with further information and feedback, which can help you in the daily management. They will be available to you by providing you with their personal advices and recommendations relating to what they interpret and analysis at the training ground, in matches and from personal contact with the players.

Assigning the appropriate backroom staff to the right focusing and responsibility area, in relationship with their abilities and qualifications, can be a valuable source of information to you, and may benefit you to make more informed decisions (e.g. suggested XI for the next match, in-match tactical analysis, training performances or as basic as players ability level), or approach the players a certain way to keep them happy.

While their advice can be an additional source for information, good or bad, depending on their level of skills and experience, it must be taken with a pinch of salt, especially if they have just entered your club and aren’t familiar with the players or if their abilities are fairly low. In fact, the better the attributes (and reputation) the more qualified are they to provide you with more accurate information (e.g player report cards and current / potential ability star rating will be more accurate).

Below I’ll quickly go through the different staff roles that are eligible to take charge of a certain responsibility area within Football Manager providing you with a summary of it’s job description and key attributes. This knowledge will be highly important once I head into the main subject of this article.

The current staff roles of Football Manager are;

• The Assistant Manager can be considered as your right hand man or the second manager – a person that needs to be trusted in all club affairs related to squad management and tactics (e.g tactical advices). He should be considered as an extension of yourself (either you prefer an assistant manager with the same abilities as yourself, or one who are better at areas you’re not as good at). He can alleviate you with basic daily management tasks whilst providing you with highly beneficial information regarding your tactics and players. The assistant manager can be in charge of selecting the starting line-up for the next match or help you with the team selection, provide you with an overview of the squad depth, handling team talks, press conferences and tunnel interviews, manage the team in friendlies (or when you are on holiday), run the general training and/or set opposition instructions to counter specific strength and weaknesses of the opposing team. His main duties is mostly related to on-pitch or match related circumstances – what can be summed up as general day-by-day coaching assignments. He is required to have both good coaching qualifications, judging player ability and judging player potential, as well as tactical knowledge and man management. A good assistant manager needs some of the similar capabilities as yourself and should fit your playing style in terms of his tactical style and preferred formation.
  • Read more about the Assistant Managers staff role and responsibilities here (coming soon).
• The General coaches (hereby meaning goalkeeper -, fitness -, defending -, attacking -, possession coaches) will be responsible for player development and match preparations through team training, individual player development and improving the level of tactical understanding about your formation and playing style to your players. The general coaches description used here relates to reserves and youth coaches too, where the only difference will be an higher level of “Working with Youngsters” required since they will spend all their time working on the training field with those at the Reserves or Under-18 squad.
• The Director of Football can be considered as the head of the recruitment team and will be responsible for sporting affairs more related to in-going and out-going transfers, contract negotiations and secondly scouting players, rather than player development and taking part on the training ground. His role can be described as the main link between you and the board / chairman as he takes into account the board directors interests (specific club visions and ambitions) at heart in all matters and dealings. He can offload unwanted players, extend contracts, negotiate on your behalf with agents and potential transfer targets, or sign players who can improve the current squad, giving you more time to focus on on-pitch performance rather than spending hours scouring for the next club legend. A good director of football is required to possess high levels of judging player ability, judging player potential and negotiations. Most often you’ll want an person with high reputation, great experience within the footballing world and higher world knowledge to be in this position. The position as director of football can also be shared with the role of the chief scout.
  • Read more about the Director of Football’s staff role and responsibilities here.
• The Technical Director can be seen as a similar job role as the director of football, but instead of signing and offloading players his role is to recruit staff (or offloading them) and take care of their development (e.g. coaching courses). He’s part of the recruitment team and will work with managing the other backroom staff, from scouts to coaches. He’s required to have high levels of judging staff ability and negotiating.
• The Loan Manager will be an important asset for you to track progress and performances of the players out on loan. His job is to find suitable clubs for players listed for loan, analyze and recommend suitable players who may benefit from a loan move and track their happiness and game time. He will then provide you with reports about players out in action on a weekly basis, giving you a better chance to track their performances. The Loan Manager’s requirements is a mix of the data analysts and the scouts. He requires high levels of judging player data and presenting it, as well as judging player ability, judging player potential and man management, in order to keep the players happy.
• The Head of Youth Development will be a highly valuable member of the junior coaching team since he will work on the training ground together with the youth coaches to develop your under-19 / under-18 players. He will also work on his own to recruit new youth talents (newgens) to your ‘hidden’ football academy (for those under 15 years old) and will provide important feedback about their development as well as the existing youth players (part of the Under-19 / Under-18 / Under-17 squad). He will substantially influence the level of the players from the annual youth intake and will be an important figure (role model) for the youngsters ability to reach their next level of football because he can be part of the daily training program – motivating and supervising the youngsters about what’s required to become professional football players, earn a professional contract or get a chance in the reserves or first team squad. Similar to the general coaches and the assistant manager his personality and preferred formation will have an important impact on the output of newgen personalities and abilities, and secondly which positions you get players for. He can be regarded as a role model for the new youth entering your club. In additional to that, he can also be compared to the Director of Football and his role, with the minor difference that he can be responsible for signing youth players, negotiate contracts and decide whom to offload.
  • Read more about the Head of Youth Development staff role and responsibilities here.
• The Chief Scout or scouts will be your eyes and ears to the footballing world outside the clubs stadium and offices. He can notify you about recommended players, hand you scout reports of players they recommend or which you’ll require a better knowledge of. The chief scout may set up scouting assignments for the other scouts and instruct them to travel regions, specific nations or specific leagues and tournaments, or analyze the next opposition. The chief scout can considered as the main link between the man in charge of transfer incomes (you or the director of football) and the scouts who sweeps away the fog of war – increasing the scouting pool which finally enables you to find more talents and generally improves the level of scouting knowledge. It’s preferred to have scouts with high levels of judging player ability and potential as well as good adaptability, plus full scouting knowledge of the nation you’d like to send them to.
  • Read more about how to find the best Football Manager scouts.
• The Data Analysts is part of the scouting team and can have a secondary job as a scout. His main job is to analyze the matches and provide you with post match analysis. Additionally, they can also be used to get scout reports of the next opposition to discover weaknesses and strength, the likely formation and starting line-up as well as providing you with useful statistics from the opponents last match regarding tendencies and key moments you should be aware of. A good data analyst should have high levels of judging team data, judging player data and presenting data. If he shall also work as a scout he requires JPA and JPP as well.
• The Head Physio and the other physios is part of the medical team and will spend their focus on players injury recovery and getting players back to an overall high physical condition after injury setbacks and jadedness. The level of the medical team will practically determine how fast players will recover from their injuries and how accurate the medical team can determine the type of injury and treat it. Their presence at matches will be of out most importance using their medical knowledge to take care of knocks and bruises or other match related injuries that can happen and which needs attention from a physio to ensure they can continue to play throughout the match. Their only important attribute will be ‘Physiotherapy’.
• While the physios look to treat occurring injuries, the Sport Scientists will look to prevent them. The Head of Sport Science will assess the current training workload and match workload to provide you with an risk assessment of who are most likely to get an injury of some sort. They take into account each players injury susceptibility, the current match sharpness, match and training load as well as past injury history to provide you with recommendations about how you shall set up individual training and evaluate training intensity.

Examining the Setup of The Staff Responsibilities & How to Take / Delegate Control

For the moment there are 8 different areas within the setup of the staff responsibility menu. It expands from who have the responsibility of building the club vision to what shall happen if you place a player on the transfer list and who shall initiate the sale of the player(s). The menu is quite comprehensive, as you’ll find sub sections and sub-sub sections. The deeper you go into it, the more it relates to specific feedback notifications, advices and what shall happen in a specific scenario.

Overall, the menu is designed to assist you and take some weights off your shoulder and select the areas of Football Manager you favor the most. But before we head deeper, let’s share some handy tips on how to take control or delegate control and use this menu, outside customizing it when creating your manager profile as dicussed above.

There are a number of ways you can delegate or take control of specific areas;

1. From the overview menu
The overview menu, which is displayed in this screenshot provides you with an comprehensive overview of all responsibilities in one screen for the areas you have control over, as well as a page for the other staff. By clicking with the left mouse button on the list item you can in a quick and easy way take control (on staff screen) or delegate control (on the manager tab) of each responsibility area. The hidden menu also reveals that you can delegate control of the area to a specific member within your backroom staff providing you a list of the staff name and his role. Albeit it’s a shortcut it does not provide you with any information about the qualifications to be in charge of the area, but it saves you a few clicks.

2. Selecting a specific area
My preferred option is to go from area to area within the staff responsibility menu and carefully select which department I want full control over, which things I can delegate to one of my staff and which specific backroom staff I’d like advices and feedback from.
Here you’re able to set up the responsibilities of both first team, reserves or youth squad (Under-19 / Under-18), and is therefore the preferred option.

Another option is to head to the specific Scouting, Training or Transfers screen and select who is responsible for that department from the top menu. This let’s you get a drop down menu of all the associated responsibility areas relating to your first team. A shortcut option to the right, lets you decide whether you’ll like to control everything yourself, delegate everything to a specific staff or let the recommended staff do it (relating to the default staff role for the assignment).

It requires a few extra mouse clicks, but will in the long run be more beneficial.

3. Via Inbox Messages
Some responsibilities can also be delegated or altered how you’ll want the information to appear, via inbox messages. These inbox messages are often related to advices, which let’s you alter who you’d like to get the information from, and handling the media. Everytime a press conference has been scheduled, you’ll get the option to send your assistant and the ability to alter who’s in charge of it for the foreseeable future.

There will also be other options to modify the responsibilities throughout the game for you to discover.

In order to set everything up properly I feel it’s important to hand you a table of which staff that will be eligible to take control of each area and what specific requirements they need in regard to staff attributes (if any fits). Hopefully this table of key attributes and available staff roles for the different types of staff responsibilities will make it easier to decide if you would need a director of football or not, or if one backroom staff can have dual responsibilities.

For minor clubs with limited backroom staff budget and wages, some staff would need to be responsible for several areas, unless you aren’t a hands on manager who wants full control of both transfers, setting scouting assignments, manage the coaching team as well as being presence on press conferences and on meeting with agents about renewal of contracts or similar matters.

My overall aim is to provide you with all the information you require to delegate control to the appropriate staff to successfully be responsible for that area. So lets continue by looking closer at the different areas within the responsibility menu by focusing on each sub section.

In-depth Overview of the Responsibility Areas

Board (Inactive to Select Yourself)

The Board responsibilities are set out by default and you will have no influence and control over these areas as the Chairman, Managing Director or the President will be responsible for the areas linked to club vision, club finances and decide upon your destiny. The members of the board are inactive persons with no staff profile.

Since you’ll never be able to take control of any of these areas and have no influence over it, I’ve decided to not discuss it any further.

Staff

The responsibilities relating to staff looks at who shall be in charge of deciding the recruitment and development of your backroom staff, both for the first team, reserves and under-19 / under-18, as well as renewing their contracts. As the third sub-section you’ll also find the backroom advices and reports tab which is discussed in detailed at the bottom of this post.

It’s also here you can decide if you want to be in charge of handling the team selection for each squad within the club or delegate it to your assistant manager / youth manager(s).

This area is a matter of who shall select the starting line up and manage the team (first team, reserves or youth team).

Preferred staff is marked in blue colour.

NB! The team selection of Reserves and youth teams are only available to modify (delegate or take control of) when your club does not have a staff assigned in the position.

Staff Recruitment

This area focuses on who shall find suitable targets for the different backroom staff positions and bring them to the club. The person will then have the responsibility of evaluating their performances and decide who to keep or let go, or if the staff team needs additional persons to be more effective.

Preferred staff.

Coaching Courses

This section relies to who shall be in charge of deciding which coaches within the first team, reserves, under-18 team or B-team that is suited to undertake coaching courses and further education to improve their coaching qualifications. There is one option for each squad – three buttons on the page – but I’ve decided to shorten it into one for my table.

1. The Head of Youth Development is not available to delegate the control to for the first team, but if you have one in your ranks he will be available to delegate the control to for your Under-23 -, reserves or under-19 / under-18 team.

Staff Contracts

As part of the responsibilities for the staff you’ll find a sub-section called contracts. Here you’ll find 16 options to delegate the responsibility of renewing and negotiating new contracts for the different staff; from the directors to the scouts. You’ll be able to select who will be renewing the contracts of the backroom staff within the first team, reserves / B-team and the youth sides.

My personal recommendations in this department is to have full control of it. This to have full control of the quality of the coaching staff within your reserves and youth teams, as well as the first team.

Other suitable coaching staff that can be selected is the Director of Football or the Technical Director in additional to the Chairman and board directors, which I do NOT recommend to delegate it to.

The person in charge requires high levels of negotiations as well as judging staff ability. Besides that it’s highly important to have knowledge of the future plans for the club and the football philosophy (including playing style and tactical style) you want to incorporate. It will put a dent on your success if a director of football sign lots of staff that does not match your preferred tactical style and coaches who simply aren’t good enough for the level your at, or according to your ambitions and the long term plan, as it may be costly to terminate the contracts within the first year of being signed.

Scouting Responsibilities

The next area is responsibilities regarding scouting and who shall manage the scouts and update you with scouting meetings.
It’s an highly important area as the person in charge will determine how the club’s world knowledge and scouting pool shall be improved.

The staff responsible within this area will not only set scouting assingments for the scouting team but also decide which nations, regions and leagues worth scouting. If your chief scout is in charge of this area, you’re only able to determine which attributes they will look after according to the instructions given within the general scouting focus.

Preferred staff is marked in blue colour.

What happens when placing a player on the shortlist?
It’s within the scouting responsibilities you’ll find the option to decide what happens when you scout a player. You’ve got the ability to decide if you want to automatically place a certain player on your shortlist once you ask for a scout report of him and for how long the scouts shall watch him before finishing the assignment and provide you with their results.

My preferred option is to Don’t Shortlist the player and watch him for a week. This gives me a brief overview of the player wand I can decide whether I’d like to watch him further, get analyst report or discard the interest of him.

Player Transfers & Contracts

Yet another comprehensive menu, this time relating to player transfers, contract negotations and what shall happen if you offer a certain player to another club.

It relates to initiating player signings, negotiating and finalise sales of players within the first team, reserves and youth team. I’ve decided to abridge this section a bit.

Find and Sign Players incl. Players For the Future

Preferred staff is marked in blue colour.

Handle Incoming Offers

Preferred staff is marked in blue colour.

Outgoing Development Loans

Preferred staff is marked in blue colour.

Player Contracts

As part of the transfers and contracts you’ll find the area more focusing on contract discussions at the second tab.

It relates to deal with contract negotiations (renewing and terminating them) for players within the first team, reserves and youth team. I’ve decided to abridge this section a bit.

Preferred staff is marked in blue colour.

Offer to Clubs

The last sub section is the ability to determine what shall happen when you offer a player to clubs, either as a transfer or as a loan.
Here you got the option to decide what shall automatically happen when you offer a player to another club, if he shall be put on the transfer list and how much you’ll ask in terms of players wages when you put a player on the development list or loan list.

New for Football Manager 2020 is the ability to;

• Set the Playing Time (Relating to the squad status of the player) at the next club
• Determine which nations that’s preferred
• Specific leagues
• The minimum training facilities for the loanee club

Allowing the player to be recalled means that you won’t be able to negotiate a playing monthly fee and means you’re not able to earn money on the loan move.

Media Responsibilities

The next area turns the attention from your squad to dealing with the media. Here you can decide who shall take control of press conferences, tunnel interviews and face the media when you announce a new signing.

Who shall be in charge of this area depends highly of whether you’d like to take charge of it yourself, by trying to play mind games with the opposite manager and influence on the result by improve the players state of mind (morale and happiness) via the media, or if you want to delegate control of it to a staff with the appropriate media handling style.

Staff that are eligible to be responsible for handling the media are;

• Human Manager
• Assistant Manager
• Director of Football
• Head of Youth Development
• Coaches incl. GK and fitness coaches
• Sport Scientists
• Data Analysts

My personal set up is having full control of all areas. I then got the option to send my assistant on press conferences and interviews on a one-off mission.

Handles Press Conferences

For some the press conferences are just a repetitive part of Football Manager, being asked ‘the same’ questions over and over again. Other sees the real value of handling the press conferences themselves. Press conferences can be an important way to manipulate the players state of mind prior to the next match by removing unnecessary pressure and handle the medias and fans expectations prior to the next match. It can be used to play mind games with the opposing manager, praise any of your players or simply divert the opposing managers attention to your first team line up and possible formation and divert pressure on to the opposing team instead of yours.

Apart from that the media can also use these events to put more pressure on you and your role, asking you about internal club affairs which has leaked to the media, current run of form and negative interviews and results that has happen in the past, which can have a negatively impact on the squad happiness and overall team morale. Ultimately it gives you an unique chance to play down the media expectations and remove unnecessary on your (young/injury fragile/weaken) squad.

Saying the right things to the media can ultimately improve player performances, while the opposite may increase the likeliness of seeing poor performances. Handling the media is a way to take matters with players over-confidence or simply influence the medias set match odds.

To summarize, handling the press conferences is a fine art. You need to be an expert of individual player personalities, analyze the opposing managers selected words and have the calmness to choose the right words at the right time and of course with the right tone. Handling press conferences should generally be done by one with long term experience with the media, often with a high level of reputation and who have an insight on how their presence affect others. A press conference can be about almost everything that has happened within the club since last match, for example unhappiness of players training workload, reaction about last team talk or rejection from the board about a board request as well as match related questions.

Available Staff to Handle Press Conferences:

• Human Manager
• Assistant Manager
• Every General Coaches (Goalkeeper & Fitness coaches included)
• Head of Youth Development

Required Attributes, personality or media handling style recommended to successfully handle press conferences:

1. Positive Media Handling Style:
   • I favour to look for an assistant manager with a media handling style of; Media Friendly, Evasive, Reserved, Play Mind Games (Hidden staff trait) or Level Headed and/or Unflappable for clubs in the bottom tier. In general I recommend to find assistant managers with high pressure, professionalism and ambitions

Handles Tunnel Interviews

On bigger occasions, the media and general journalists may want to have a word with you pre-match, asking you some questions about the upcoming event. Tunnel interviews is often highly influenced by the heat of the moment and requires one who can stay calm, handle the pressure and be professional no matter what questions he’s been asked.

Tunnel interviews can be a great situation where you send your assistant manager to talk to the media, while you are boosting the morale of your squad, or give them the last tactical instructions to improve player performances and players state of mind.

Available Staff to Handle Tunnel Interviews:

• Human Manager
• Assistant Manager
• Every General Coaches (Goalkeeper & Fitness coaches included)
• Head of Youth Development

Required Attributes, personality or media handling style recommended to successfully handle tunnel interviews:

1. Positive Media Handling Style:
   • I favour to look for an assistant manager with a media handling style of; Media Friendly, Evasive, Reserved, or Level Headed and/or Unflappable. Here there is an increased importance of the ability to control their temperament and show sportsmanship.

Conclusion

Personally I recommend staff with a media handling style of ‘Media-Friendly’, ‘Evasive’, and/or ‘Level-Headed’. I avoids staff with Volatile and Outspoken, as you never know what you’ll get of output.

My personal set up is having full control of all areas. I then got the option to send my assistant on press conferences and interviews on a one-off mission.

Training Responsibilities

For every manager who wants to ensure the playing style and your football philosophy comes alive and are incorporated fully to your players it’s important to ensure the correct man leads and set up training schedules. You can’t complain about mixed results with your tactic if you let an ‘unfitting’ assistant manager be in charge of training. Let’s look closer at the training responsibilities and what the staff in charge requires to lead it.

Personally I recommend to take charge yourself, as you are the only one who knows the most about the tactic you’ve created and what’s your vision with it, the type of players required to get success with it and what areas the players shall work on to better their strength or improve their weaknesses.

This responsibility area looks at creating training schedules and setting focus on areas the squad shall work on plus handling individual training (adding traits, set additional focus and intensity level).

Preferred staff is marked in blue colour.

IMPORTANT! If you take control of both the general training and the individual training OR just one of the areas of the Reserves or Under-18 (or what the teams below first team are called), then the button to the team will display beneath the Development Centre in the sidebar menu.

Preferred staff is marked in blue colour.

My personal preference is to be in charge of setting up the individual training for all the players, no matter if they are in the first team, reserves or under-19. This gives me to ensure the players work on similar player roles as what I use in the first team tactics (despite they might fit a different player role better).

It means I are more reluctant to leave the general training to the youth manager, despite I got training schedules created for that particular team.

This also gives me the normal squad view of the youth sides and saves me a few clicks, instead of going: Development Centre > Under-19s > Overview / Squad / Training.

Tactics Responsibilities

The responsibilities regarding tactics let you decide who shall give you team selection advices and run the tactical briefings for the first team, under-23 / reserves and Under-19 / U18. Let’s look closer at the different responsibility areas regarding tactics.

Leads Tactical Briefings

Tactical briefings is a great introduction to Football Manager as it lets you tell your team to focus on key aspects of your tactics and the game plan against the next opposition. Here you’re able to ensure the players put extra attention to one or more specific tactical instructions. I use it to tell my team to focus on what I consider as the most main features of my tactic, whether it’s to play a short passing game, with a high defensive line and a high engagement line. Just basic things for my tactic.

The decision to select one focusing area over the other may come from how you’ve analyzed your next opposition, things that the team were weak at in the last match or areas of the game model they have not fully incorporated but is important for the success of the tactic.

The feature, also enables you to instruct specific players to empasize on specific tactical traits for the next match. The areas you can ask them to focus on relates to suited player instructions and traits for the role. This means you can ask your wingback to get forward as often as possible, ask your forward to dribble more or take more risks, or ask your central midfielder to hold position rather than roaming around.

Tactical briefings also lets you set up specific opposition instructions and match plans, but that’s more suited for a future guide.

Available Staff to Handle Tactical briefings:

• Human Manager
• Assistant Manager
• Data Analysts
• Every General Coaches (Goalkeeper & Fitness coaches included)
• Head of Youth Development
• Director of football

Required Attributes and personal skills to handle tactical briefings successfully:

1. Tactical Knowledge
2. Judging Player Ability
3. Judging Team Data
4. Judging Player Data
5. Motivation
6. Man Management
7. Excellent knowledge of tactical suggestions on upcoming matches and notice trends from previous matches
8. A preferred tactical style similar to your tactic, especially in regard to playing style, so the team doesn’t play a style completely unfamiliar to them.

Team Selection Advice

Football Manager 2020’s new feature team selection advice lets you get suggestion from your coaching staff about suggestion on thestarting line-up for the next match. Here the person takes into account the last week(s) training performance, current ability of the players, form, match sharpness and condition, tactical familiarity with the player role/duty and position and other strengths or weaknesses which may suggest selecting on over the other.

Personally, it’s a highly welcomed feature which gives me a second opinion and more feedback about my squad.

Available Staff to Handle Team Selection Advices are:

Color Code: First Team / Reserves / Under-18

• Assistant Manager ***
• U23 / Reserves Manager
• Under-19 Manager
• Head of Youth Development Under-18
• Data Analysts
• Every General Coaches (Goalkeeper & Fitness coaches included)
• Director of football

What you’d like is a person who can provide an additional recommendation outside your own opinion. Whether you adopt to them or not, is a totally different question.

Required Attributes and personal skills to provide team selection advices:

1. Tactical Knowledge
2. Judging Player Ability
3. Excellent Knowledge of the players
4. Takes part in training (as a coaching staff)

Handles Opposition Instructions

Countering opposition strengths and weaknesses is one important part of succeeding with your match tactic and increase your chance of a win. Opposition instructions is one part of emulating specific opposition weaknesses and counter specific strengths.

Opposition instructions are normally set pre-match via tactical briefings or before sending your players out for the first half, but can be beneficial to be altered during the match, either because of substitutions, poor match condition and low match sharpness, a minor injury or a player exploiting an area of the field to such a degree you have to emulate him.

The person responsible for handling opposition instructions will prepare and implement specific instructions to handle the opposition players, and it’s important the person are accurate with his assessments.

Available Staff to Handle Opposition Instructions:

Color Code: First Team / Reserves / Under-18

• Human Manager
• Assistant Manager ***
• U23 / Reserves Manager
• Under-19 Manager
• Every General Coaches (Goalkeeper & Fitness coaches included)
• Head of Youth Development

Required Attributes and personal skills to handle opposition instructions successfully:

1. Tactical Knowledge
2. Judging Player Ability
3. (Scouting) Knowledge of the players of the opposition team (and their strength and weaknesses)

Match Day Responsibilities

The final area within responsibilities are instructions regarding matches and specific match day occasions. It includes everything from team talks to who shall be in charge of the squad in friendly matches.

Leads Friendly Matches

For some the boredom of playing through X amount of unimportant friendly matches may make them opt for someone else to manage the squad. Friendly matches are a great opportunity to improve tactical familiarity levels and gel the squad together as well as giving those below the first team level a chance to get some first team experience.

This means that you will rely on your assistant manager or whoever in charge to get your squad comfortable with the chosen playing style and formation. The person in charge will have to select the starting line up (if you have not set any specific team selection guidelines), alter the match tactic and its tactical instruction during the match as well as handling team talks and touchline talks. You, as the human manager won’t be presence and will have no say in substitutions done or changes the person in charge may do.

It’s highly important that carefully consider whom to manage the team in friendly matches in order to not confuse your squad with difference in playing styles and formations, football philosophy and player development policy.

Available staff to manage the team in friendly matches:

Color Code: First Team / Reserves / Under-18

• Human Manager
• U23 / Reserves Manager
• Under-19 Manager
• Assistant Manager ***
• Every General Coaches (Goalkeeper & Fitness coaches included)
• Head of Youth Development

Required Attributes, personality or media handling style:

• Similar Tactical Style and Preferred formation as yourself.
• Tactical Knowledge
• Judging Player Ability
• Motivation
• Man Management
• Positive Media Handling Style
• Few or none contradiction coaching and managing tendencies which influences on how you want your team to play. For example tends to rely on set-pieces or favour attacking football when you put less focus on it or tries to incorporate the opposite.

Arrange Friendlies
It’s also within this section you got the ability to let the person in charge (most preferable the assistant manager or youth manager) to schedule friendly matches if there are no fixtures that week.

I tend to untick the option for the first team, as I like control of the pre-season while having it ticked for reserves and youth teams.

My preferences are;

• Arrange a friendly if no fixture during the week
• Arrange a friendly if eleven or more reserves / youth players are lacking match fitness
• Arrange a friendly every week
• Arrange a friendly every two weeks
• Arrange a friendly every month

I recommend to tick this option for both Under-21 and Under-19 and select arrange a friendly if no fixture during the week.

First Team Player Availability:
Another option in this section is to let unfit first team players get the chance to automatically play for the reserves or the youth team, and how often you’d like to receive notifications of which players that shall be available for the reserves or youth teams. It can happen before every match, when there are players within the first team who needs to improve their match sharpness or never.

My personal recommendation is to let the option of automatically make unfit first team players play for the team unticked and instead be asked prior to every match if there are first team players I’d like to make available, since I tend to call-up 2-3 promising youth who are part of the first team squad and will feature on the bench.

Handles Team Talk

Team talks can be a great way to give your squad a morale boost before match kick-off as well as ensure players don’t loose concentration or gets carried away by being too aggressive for example. The person in charge must be present on matches and carefully study players body language as well as knowing what may trigger an improved performance in the first or second half, either it’s to ensure players are disciplined, gets more creative or simply enjoys the moment.

Team talks will be given by the staff responsible pre-match, at half time and pro-match. Team talks must not be confused with touchline team talks, which is active for the human manager throughout the match, no matter who you have selected as responsible for handling team talks.

You can have control ofleading the team talks for the first team, reserves and youth teams, but I do not recommend to lead it for your youth unless you have control of the team selection and/or tactics.

Available Staff to Handle Team Talks:

• Human Manager
• Assistant Manager ***
• U23 / Reserves Manager
• Under-19 Manager
• Every General Coaches (Goalkeeper & Fitness coaches included)
• Head of Youth Development

Required Attributes and personal skills to handle team talks successfully:

1. Motivation
2. Man Management
3. Knowledge of Clubs Players (and their personalities)

Handles Touchline Instructions

Touchline instructions lets you deliver shouts to the players asking the players to play with more passion, be more creative, get forward or simply praise them. These instructions should be seen as contextual directions to boast the players morale and confidence, which sequentially influence on their performance.

This means that you need to analyze the body language of the players, the player rating, match score and the pre-match feedback from your assistant manager, and what may work in one occasion might not work the next as it also depends on the oppnent and how big of a contender they are.

Preferred staff is marked in blue colour.

Color Code: First Team / Reserves / Under-18

Available Staff to handle touchline instructions:

• Human Manager
• Assistant Manager ***
• U23 / Reserves Manager
• Under-19 Manager
• Every General Coaches (Goalkeeper & Fitness coaches included)
• Head of Youth Development

Required Attributes and personal skills:

1. Motivation
2. Judging Team Data
3. Tactical Knowledge
4. Judging Player Data

Backroom Advices and Reports (Complete Overview)

Below I will take a look at the backroom advice and reports screen. This section is found within Staff responsibilities and let you set up who you’d like to get advices from for a number of importart areas relating to transfers, contracts, player development and other misc items.

These advices can pop up in your inbox as emails or via news tickers on any specific page. You can find them by clicking the icon in the top right corner below the ‘Continue’ button. It’s only when you click at these advices you’ll know the knowledge level of a particular staff, both relating to the advice category and his knowledge of the club players.

Or, you can get a summary of all advices for a particular player at:

Player name > Development > Advices

The staff personal in charge of these areas will be the ones who gives you vital information and recommendations at backroom advice meetings and via other information emails send to your inbox at specific occations, like prior to a match.

These meetings held between you and your coaching staff can occur; weekly, every fortnight, every month, every three months, every six months or pre-match.

Transfer & Contract Advices

This advice relates to whether you shall consider to renew or negotiate contract renewals, as the player might get close to the end of his contract, or is starting to get unhappy because of the wage level.

Key Attributes: Judging Player Ability + Judging Player Potential

Suitable Staff:
Director of Football
Chief Scout
Scouts
Assistant Manager

Providing Scout Feedback

The person responsible for this event will collate and provide feedback of scouting assignments.

Key Attributes: None

Preferred Staff:
Chief Scout
Scouts
Director of Football
Data Analyst

Player Reports

Player Development

The person in charge will be responsible of providing advices about the development of the players and how much potential they got compared to your current squad. These development advices are viewable within the Development Centre.

Key Attributes:
Working With Youngsters
Judging Player Potential
Judging Player Ability

Secondary:
Knowledge of Club Players
Knowledge of Player Development

Preferred Staff:
Loan Manager
Head of Youth Development
U23/U19 Manager
Assistant Manager

Youth Development

Youth Development details the specific staffs knowledge about the development of youth players at the club. It doesn’t influence the quality and amount of players coming through on the annual youth intake nor the training level and training assignments set for the youth team. Instead it relates to the players within the Under-19 squads development rate – have they progressed enough to earn a professional contract, be moved to the reserves team or would it be handy to send them out on loan to progress further. While you will get tactical advices every week, advices about youth development might not even occur on a monthly basis.

The person in charge will be responsible of providing advices about the development of your youth players and information about the next generation of talents coming through. His reports will be visible within the Development Centre and he will report to you about the level of the reserves squad and youth teams as well as advices regarding the new prospects from the youth intake.

Key Attributes:
Working With Youngsters
Judging Player Potential
Judging Player Ability

Secondary:
Knowledge of Club Players
Knowledge of Player Development

Preferred Staff:
Head of Youth Development
U19 Manager
Technical Director
Assistant Manager

Since the job description of the head of youth development is to partially inform you about the youths development I feel it’s only natural to let him hand you advices about the Under-18 players progression.

If you have not signed a Head of Youth Development I would have selected the Under-18 Manager as he will have great knowledge about the youth players too, due to him being on the training ground. He will have excellent knowledge about their abilities and how much they have progressed in the last months, and normally what it would take to develop any further.

Provides Player Reports

The person in charge of this area collates and provides you with the coach reports of all players within the club and gives you the star ratings of current and potential ability you’ll see next to a players name within the squad view or the player profile of your own team.

Selecting a backroom staff member who got poor knowledge of your players and lower judging player ability and judging player potential will have dramatically affects. Perhaps you not use a player who are better than his star rating dictates or you don’t extend a contract for a possible first team candidate.

Key Attributes:
Judging Player Ability
Judging Player Potential

Secondary:
Knowledge of Club Players

Preferred Staff:
Assistant Manager
Director of Football
Head of Youth Development
Data Analysts
Coaches (incl. fitness and GK)

Provides Loan Feedback

Sending your breakthrough prospects and promising talents out on loan gives you an unique opportunity to give playing time to the player, as he might not be considered good enough at the moment to feature in the first team. The person who are responsible for collating and providing you with feedback of players out on loan is an important personal. He will track the player, evaluate his playing time and loan happiness and will notify you with advices if anything needs to be taken care of.

Key Attributes:
Judging Player Ability
Judging Player Data

Secondary:
Man Management
Presenting Data

Preferred Staff:
Loan Manager
Chief Scout
Director of Football
Scouts
Data Analysts

Misc Advices

Tactical Advices

The staff set to provide you with advices about all matters relating to tactics, whether it may be changing the mentality for the next match, change player roles or duties or add/remove certain team or player instructions that may benefit on the match result, or if you need to put your attention to a player’s match fitness due to low match sharpness.

He will provide you with not only tactical suggestions for the upcoming match, but also identify trends from previous matches and give you advices on how to improve the results with your tactic. It’s highly attached to the staff attribute tactical knowledge in order to provide you with accurate tips on how to deal with the next match. He may also provide fedback about partnerships and which players who plays well together.

These advices should be taken with a pinch of salt as it may contradict to your tactical philosophy, but can also be beneficial take into account when setting a match plan as his suggestions relates to oppositions stats, tactical system and preferred playing style.

Some advices may be brought up simply because the staff in charge does not see it useful or beneficial for the team or the player for the forth coming match according to his current tactical knowledge.

If you should put any relevance to them or not, is a personal matter, but the better the staff is in regard to tactical knowledge the more accurate will his recommendations be. It’s then up to you to decide if you should alter the system or use your preferred style. His tips can also be used as a plan B in case you see the team struggles in the first 10-15 minutes of the match.

Key Attributes:
Tactical Knowledge
Tactical Coaching

Available staff for tactical advices are:

• Assistant Manager
• Data Analysts
• General Coaches (except GK coaches)

For this area I prefer to select a staff that spends most of his time on the training ground, but is also present at matches. This is often the same staff that handles tactical coaching at the coaches training area tab. Often I tend to select the assistant manager as I have a preference to sign assistant manager with excellent tactical knowledge and good tactical coaching.

It’s important to note that the staff’s preferred formation and playing style is also important here, in order to not provide you with advices which defies your tactical philosophy.

Training

Training tips can always be useful no matter if you are a Football Manager veteran or not. In this circumstance it relates to the staffs knowledge about the training of the players and the team. The staff responsible to provide tips about training will give you advices about match preparations, general training as well as individual training focuses such as traits to add – providing you with tips on how the player can be improved by heighlighting his weaknesses.

For example will the staff recommend you to put a player on a specific additional training focus which he thinks will be beneficial for his current player role and duty, or inform you to increase/decrease the training intensity for the player when his training performance drops or his training workload becomes too high.

The required attributes to make accurate advices relates to the main coaching attributes (level of attacking, defending, tactical, technical, and mental attributes), as well as man management and judging player ability and judging player data.

Preferred backroom staff for training are:

• Assistant Manager
• General Coaches (including fitness and GK coaches)
• Data Analyst

I prefer to select the coach with the best overall coaching stats with the attention set to the staff with highest man management of them – a general coach rather than a specialist – a staff with decent tactical coaching and coaching attributes relating to my playing style (e.g. attacking and technical for an attacking possession tactic or defending and mental for a counter-attacking system).

Backroom Team

Your backroom staff team are highly important for the development of the squad and the better coaches the more likely will the players adapt the tactical instructions and get familiar with their player role and duty, or progress to become a better player. This area focuses more on advices and feedback relating to your backroom team and how they shall improve and develop themselves by recommending staff who can improve their coaching badges.

Key Attributes:
Judging Staff Ability

• Technical Director
• Director of football
• Data Analysts
• Assistant Manager
• Coaches

Providing Opposition Reports

This section relates to the collection of advices relating to the next opposition. The person in charge will provide you with reports about the next opposition.

Key Attributes:
Judging Team Data
Presenting Data
Judging Player Ability

• Data Analyst
• Chief Scouts
• Director of football
• Scouts

About The Knowledge Areas:

Knowledge of Clubs Players tells you how well the staff knows the players at the club. Herein lies knowledge about each and every player abilities (player attributes and player preferred moves), their current ability, potential ability, their personality and reactions and finally hidden attributes which can be important to know when setting individual training (injury proneness). For example an assistant manager with poor knowledge of Clubs players will inaccurately compare one players skills to another, rate players current and potential abilities wrong and might also set wrong training assignments. A newly appointed scout, coach or assistant manager will have lower knowledge of the club players than a staff who have been at the club for the last 10 years.

Relates to the staffs time at the club and his overall ability in Judging Player Ability and Player Potential

The Knowledge level ranges from: Poor to Excellent

Training Knowledge tells you about a staff’s knowledge of the training at the club. A staff who’s part of the daily training and features on the training ground will have better knowledge of training than a director or a data analyst.

Tactical Knowledge relates to the backroom staff’s knowledge of the tactics and tactical instructions applied within the club.

Conclusion

Since I decided to write about Football Manager share of my 20 years plus of experience I wanted to emphasize the importance of looking at the game in overall. As I see it, everything is related to another in football and especially Football Manager. You can not overlook one area of the game without putting a big dent on your ambitions to take your club to success.

The backroom staff of Football Manager is one of these areas of importance. I look at the coaching team and the clubs backroom staff as the blood running through the veins of the body. A body where the heart can be compared to training since it can be described as the main engine, while scouting can be compared to the lungs and the bodies breathing system. Before I take the comparison too far, I think you all understand what I’m trying to say. Without a 5-star coaching team, including an assistant manager, with fitting tactical style and preferred formation, training won’t be as effective, players won’t develop at a preferable rate and without appropriate training schedules they won’t get accustomed to the tactic, player roles and duties that quickly.

I’ve often come across people who finds Football Manager too easy and would have wished difficulty levels incorporated, but it’s actually within this area of either being an hands-on manager or delegate almost all control within scouting, transfers and media the difficulty level of Football Manager exists.

By taken control of more areas of Football Manager it will not only make your job as the manager more time consuming, since you have to keep focus and control of all areas of the running of the club: from for example staff recruitment to dealing with signing / offloading players, but also more difficult. A true expert takes control of as many areas of the game to ensure signings fit their football philosophy and visions, to carefully develop your up-and-coming hot prospect with the requirements needed to fit the role within the first team.

This is why, it’s important to understand what’s useful to have full control over and what you can delegate to a trustee staff, without hurting your campaign, as well as decicing your difficulty level of your save.