The start of the 2008/09 Premiership season has surely been an exciting one, filled with shocking transfers, tap up allegations and already the managerial merry go round has got itself moving. The recent departures of Alan Curbishley from West Ham and Kevin Keegan leaving Newcastle have highlighted a new way of doing football. The role of the Premiership manager is changing, less of a manager now and to more of toward the head coach.


This is nothing new to the world of football, but instead only new to English football. This system where by we have a director of football who is making all the big management decisions like who will be the next strikers while the head coach will be picking the tactics and playing those players how he sees fit and dealing with the day-to-day running of the football squad.


But this is becoming more of a trend in our league as big money foreign investment comes into the Premiership. Chairmen want to know that their money is safe and they have a man acting on their behalf to bring players in and giving him more control in the process. But how can Football Manager deal with this?


There is no question that the introduction of this to Football Manager would not be met with much pleasure, as one of the most enjoyable past times of a virtual football manager is the ability to negotiate the purchases of the next Cristino Ronaldo to Hull, or in fact actually buying Cristino Ronaldo for Hull. We like the control to create our own fantasy football team and to have that power taken off us would be something that would definitely happen, my own at least, the enjoyment of Football Manager. We want to feel that the squads that we are bringing into our chosen teams are ours.


But there is still an argument for the implementation for such a feature. The great thing about Football Manager is the ability to play it how ever you feel fit, spawning small group community groups within the scene who love to share their experience in how they play their games, implementing their own rules for their enjoyment. Be it the die hard Lower League Managers who like to see everything being played out as if they were really there. Or the fantasist who messes around with the database in order to create different challenges. So therefore I can’t see any reason why there isn’t someone out their that would enjoy playing the game in a more of a Head Coach sort of role.


The game in itself has become a much more sophisticated in the simulation of football and from this a further grasp of tactics is needed. This has created a whole new dimension to the game and now it is more important to work on tactics development. Meaning that the creation of tactics and putting them to use is a game in itself and the Head Coach role could aid in further concentrating on this part of the game for some people and the general running of the players you have at hand and setting another challenge for Football Manager users. It is becoming less and less likely for a Football Manager gamer to be able to set up one tactic and bring in the players and just press continue until the next game comes along. Meaning that we have to get more involved with the Head Coaches role at the moment anyway and further SI games will continue to build on this.


It is something that would surely be easy to add in at the start of the game, whether you wish to allow chairmen to have this sort of option, liking masking of attributes and it will add something different, when you are picking new clubs to go to in a career game. You can either go to Manchester City who will give you full control of the squad and everyone who comes in or out. Or take the Arsenal job but only on a head coach basis. This will give some more validity to managers contracts that are in the game already that don’t really mean much to the average player apart from just a chance to stay in a job for a few more years.


The system of Head Coach and Football Director can work well in the real world, if only those impatient chairmen would only see that a good relationship is needed between the two men. The way the system has proven successful is for a manager to be able to identfy which players he wants for his club and pass that on to the Footballing Director whose job will then to be to capture these players, Arsenal is a good example where it is working. Allowing the Head Coach then to concentrate on the more day to day aspect of his squad, without having to worry about negotiations with other clubs. This has been something I have said before would be an good introduction into Football Manager, instead of transfers budgets, hand your chairmen a selection of players you want at the club and within the financial boundaries of the team and type of chairmen he can go away and try and get the players you want.


Although I doubt SI games has any intention on bringing this system into the Football Manager game, I don’t think that Football Head Coach 2010 would be as dire as many people would expect it to be and instead offer more realism and a different way to play the game.




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