#zealand

I get asked this all the time. If you have been playing a franchise like football manager for 10, 15, maybe even 20 years, the mechanics can be so familiar that you handle the tactics, wonderkids, and dynamics like it’s second nature. Then all of a sudden, FM becomes a breeze from one year to...

We’re back baby - I asked for your very best wonderkids that make the Football Manager world go around and you all have obliged. Now it’s time for @DoctorBenjy FM and I to take a look at these fine wonderkid specimens and tell you if they’re any good or not, on a totally objective and in no way...

Identifying and signing potential wonderkids is my favorite part of Football Manager. It felt a little more hit or miss than usual on FM21, with the transfer signings I made on my new FM save sometimes falling by the wayside as soon as they arrived because, well, they’re not wonderkids. They...

Scouting and identifying wonderkids in football manager is honestly my favorite part of the game. I do have doubts that FM21 has as reliable a scouting system as previous editions, so I decided to test how I would do against it as part of a series of videos bout football manager potential on a...

It’s hard to play football manager, but somehow the only thing harder than that is finding a save that you can really sink your teeth into. This has happened to me before, but this was before I found a way to turn every FM save I play into something I really enjoy. I’m warning you, this is going...

As we made our way through my save, I ran headlong into a problem I have over and over trying to rush to the top of the game. This transfer market issue has followed me through the years on Football Manager, making this video is my promise to myself to have a new transfer tactic in the coming...

Fine, you caught me, I like making tier lists for FM stuff. It gives me a reference point for when I get asked about my opinion on something like a football manager personality I can say ‘oh, it goes right here and then point people to this guide. There are a lot more personalities than you...

Tactics take a lot of different forms in football manager, most of which I can get behind, but what happens when you have a very talented team that just flames out defensively? Well, apparently a few too many Thomas Mueller’s pop up in your tactic to be healthy. This episode of saving your save...

It is time to take a dip back into the Reddit pool. We talk tactics, football manager being amazing and being broken at the same time, with a few wonderkid finding methods in between. The Reddit is now my favorite source of FM memes and I am only allowed to look at it once a month, so you best...

The most important position in soccer or football is the forward. They make the most money, the tactics are built around them, they score the goals and they have the coolest hair. Football Manager is no different, except for maybe the hair part, FM and the Newgan facepack are still trying to...

Football Manager had to react to the COVID pandemic as much as the real world itself did, as it tries to replicate the actual footballing world itself. This has combined with some other trends to lead a whole host of FM players into stalemates in lower leagues that in previous years, the...

Get a super cool fancy new website with Squarespace here: http://www.squarespace.com/zealand The Football Manager match engine is the stage on which the drama of the game is played out. I do sometimes jump around after signing a wonderkid, but the most dramatic moments when I’m playing FM on...

When I started making videos about Football Manager I figured I would help people with tactics, scouting, and just making guides about the game. Fast forward a year and now all of a sudden a US international from my childhood says he thinks about me the same way I think about him because he...

I (Zealand, yes I still do my own stunts here) am a little insane. Sometimes. The way we film videos is I record myself for sometimes a couple of hours at my desk and some crazy things tend to happen. Yes, I help a lot of people play Football Manager, but I also drive myself to the brink in the...

Football manager transfers are a part of the game where experience matters more than anything else. Getting a feel for how much you can push teams for in FM, how long you can wait for a good offer to show up, when to take a good transfer offer to sell your wonderkid and when to hold on. It’s the...

I try to make a lot of videos that help you scout as well as possible. It’s hard enough in Football Manager even with me guiding you, though. Sometimes your scouting reports keep coming back terrible, you cannot sign a good scouting staff, or the FM gods just hate you and you can’t afford...

So Doctorbenjy is a great football manager player. Some of you might not know this fact, but he is very good at FM. You simply cannot play FM as much as he does without knowing what you’re doing. But, sometimes, you end up in a save where you need a fresh set of eyes on scouting and tactics and...

I spend a lot of time making targeted videos about one specific part of Football Manager. Take the last one, for example, a deep dive into why throw-ins are now a defunct set-piece on FM. Sometimes, and by sometimes I mean once a literal year, it’s good to sit down and ask you all what questions...

It was a beloved if unrealistic staple of football manager for years. Lofting the ball into the box to create chaos and score some free goals. Really, the most effective set piece in the game. But, probably because every team in the world is NOT Iceland, FM has seen fit to nerf long throws so...

I received a great idea a while back. I’ve now finally been able to investigate -- what is the world’s worst men’s national football or soccer team? The FIFA world rankings are obviously flawed, but they’re the only actual vehicle we have for giving us the answer to this question. You can...

Football manager has the most robust scouting network in the entire world. Over 395,000 players, cataloged, rated across 40 or so attributes, and put into a video game each year. Then, there is FIFA. It locks in on the top leagues mainly in Europe, providing equally detailed ratings to fit a...

There is a tip on football manager that I recommend using to orient yourself during a new save, or when you’re looking at a new save. It is the team comparison screen. This gives you an idea of how good your team is relative to other teams in your league. It can also tell you if all those...

I love trials. They are an amazing, real tool that football manager has adopted to allow any team to bring in free agents to have a look at their skills without having to deploy a scout. I also have a bit of a habit of using trials in FM as something of a quick-fire system. Some say I abuse it...

I was recently devastated by injuries while playing in the Football Manager championship, the FM streamer showdown. I was in intense emotional pain while my players were more in physical pain, but the point being, I wanted to do a study on how to prevent injuries in football manager. So, if you...

I was asked a question on stream, it was a simple one: what is the best position in Football Manager? In a sense, this question ignores tactics and wonderkids and player roles and everything else that affects the most important position in your team in particular. But, as I do, I sat there and...

This is Ollie’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXBNYqHC-DakYa2D6gvkYDw A few days ago, I got pinged into oblivion saying Ollie Dixon was playing Football Manager and mentioned me. I sprung into action to figure out the most important part of this sentence: who is Ollie Dixon, and who...

BACK to the Football Manager database to put together the best young European players in the game. We, of course, have to make some judgment calls outside of the FM database ratings, but we back those up with evidence, of course. The top U20 wonderkids in Europe is a best XI that will surprise...

We did a video a week or so ago about the best clubs for producing those juicy football manager wonderkids we all crave, but what about the best areas to send your scouts to, to, ya know, find juicy wonderkids. We break out an aesthetically pleasing tier list to show how FM21 divides up every...

We finally advanced a day in our beginner’s example save for Football Manager, and we had to in order to sign our scouting staff. The next thing you need to set in FM in order to go along in your journey. Scouting is also one of the most important, if you don’t handle it directly you will be...

This is one of the first tests I dreamed up for Football Manager and I’m finally bringing it back for FM21. Which attributes are the most important for goalkeepers in football manager? I had some theories going into it, about positioning, reflexes, and agility, which had all affected my scouting...