Hey guys, as you will know by now I decided to quit on Soccer Manager after the absurd changes they made to the best football management game in the land. I stand by my decision and although I will miss it greatly, there was just no way I could continue to play a game that I wasn’t going to enjoy. What didn’t help was Soccer Manager’s arrogant attitude to the changes on the their social media pages. They were delighted to add comment to anyone who praised the changes but refused to even acknowledge any criticism and, going by some comments I managed to read, actually removed comments that they didn’t like, saying they were made by trolls.
It is this ignorance that has blighted them over the years. To me, with the addition of the ‘You can skip this advert in 5…4….3….2….1’, it looks like they have decided to make a quick buck rather than listen to the paying customer. Ok, yes, their were a few who wanted all of these changes but they were in the minority and not the majority as SM try to suggest. In my opinion, all that was wrong with the game was that the match engine needed renewed. One job Soccer Manager, just one fucking job. We all know the match engine was outdated and unrealistic with one of the things that annoyed me most being the red card scenario, where a team had a player sent off and then 95% of the time scored the next goal and often went on to win. It was if the engine issued the red card and then gave the advantage to the wrong team. They did say there was a new match engine now but I don’t know what difference it has made but I did see that in another custom world, The Ashclowbel, which has it’s own Facebook page, that one of the boys put a report of his team’s 5-3 win and mentioned on how his team won the game despite being reduced to 10 men for 65mins. WHAT!!!! He also showed a screen grab of the final score and, going by the time of the goals, he had a player sent off on 35min and then scored on 40min. Oh oh, that looks very familiar. This new match engine doesn’t seem that new.
The interface, as you know, changed dramatically. It changed so much that they felt they had to issue instructions on how to use it. The game has slowed down and you need to click a million times to see everything you could see in one or two clicks with the old format. It took me a good while to find the league table, something that should be available instantly. I don’t even know what it is like to buy a player as I got bored by time I even thought about it. Some teams that have been built up over the course of 3 or 4 seasons were rendered almost useless because of the change of where players can play. I have read some comments that have shown their anger of players becoming useless in their system overnight after they had spent much time trying to negotiate deals to buy the player from another manager. The answer from Soccer Manager? the silence was deafening. These guys do not care about the paying customer, only what money they can bring in from advertisers. The way they introduced the free single player game and then neglected the multi player game tells its own story.
I am very sad at how this has all turned out as the game became a part of my life for nine years. I have even put it before many other things I could have done and whenever the wife would say that we were going out somewhere or had been invited to a party etc, my first thought would be how to sort my teams for that night. Damn, I even took my laptop on holiday abroad so I could still play the game. Even the wife gave up moaning about the game and knew that she would always have a happy husband as long as he had his laptop and Soccer Manager.
So, as you can see, I was a great fan of the game due to the way it was played and the way that I could choose how to play it. Even better was the interaction with other players. I have got to know so many people that I could call friends without ever having met them. A few put a lot of effort into making the game more enjoyable, making it more realistic with these blogs and giving the chance to people to live in an imaginative world, an escape from the pressures of life.
I have to mention some folk here and if you are not mentioned then it doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy playing the game with you. It is folk I feel have influenced the way I have played the game and the way they have made it much more enjoyable over the years. These people are, in no particular order, Frank Hirst, Stephen Beddows, Steven Lowery, Dale Price (Piero), Clint Brownfield, John Vinicombe, Prince Michael William, Lee Reynolds, Steven Connell (Brian Clough), Jim Kennedy, David Tollan, Adam ? (Golden Bear), Scott Brown, Michael Hudson and many others.
I have not closed my account as I have SM coins still remaining and I leave the option open to come back if I miss it too much but I doubt that will happen with the game in it’s current format. As for now, I would like to thank everyone for making the game so enjoyable over the years and in case I do not ever return would like to wish you all good luck in whatever you do in the future.

Ciao.