Series The underwhelming assistant manager

[Lee-Roy]

The underwhelming assistant manager

As in real life, players of the FMH series have an assistant manager (hereon known as ass man/men) at their disposal. At football clubs across the world the role ass man can vary hugely. While some ass men could find themselves fetching coffee and printing paperwork, others might be taking training sessions, delivering team talks and attending interviews. Unfortunately for players of the football manager simulation game FMH, no matter who you are or where you manage, your ass man will be severely underwhelming. Remembering that the job of scouting players is done by your scouts, let's take a look at the duties of the ass man in FMH:

• Choosing your team when you just can't be bothered. This is actually my favourite feature of the assistant manager. More often than not, my ass man will choose the team leaving me to make the tweaks I want. Filling every position including subs can be a fairly long winded process and letting your assistant do than can ease the burden. He will fill positions based on form and generally I only have to make a few tweaks. A definite thumbs up for this one.

• Covering your holidays. The only other feature of the ass man that I appreciate. If I'm playing the 1kc or something similar and my chosen player is injured for a 1-3 matches, I'll take a holiday. The assistant manager will cover for you, simulating the games almost instantly. The amount of time and pointless matches this has saved me is priceless.

• Telling you how good your players, and other teams players are, based on their previous few matches. Nobody needs this. We could easily look at a potential new players form and come to the same conclusions.

• Tells you the best way to praise/ criticise a player wether it be publicly or privately. Half the time I find the ass man to be wrong anyway so his advice here isn't very helpful.

• Informing you of how flexible a player is in retraining positions. Again, quite often the ass man is wrong here so I use my own knowledge of the game to figure out how to retrain a player.

• Letting you know when a player has performed well in training and deserving of a first team run. This doesn't happen often enough to be of any use to me.

• Informing you of player unrest - homesickness, wanting a new contract, pushed too hard in training etc. Basically things we'd notice ourselves in the personal screen before too long.

This list likely doesn't cover everything and I may be missing some obvious features of the assistant manager (be sure to let me know in the comments) but the general feel of it is that he is very underwhelming. Below I am going to be offering some suggestions as to how the ass man can become a vital part of your day to day and match day running of the team.

The suggestions for a better ass man

• Giving you player reports more based on PA. Not giving too much away obviously, but something more substantial than recent form.

• Giving you a range in what to bid for a player. Rather than make a guess and be told you're well off, or for another team to come in and way outbid you, maybe the ass man can give you a general idea of what amount the team may go for.

• Being able to tell your ass man to spend one on one time with a player - wether it be for extra training or morale purposes. This can be counteracted by leaving you without an ass man for an amount of time.

• Named assistant managers with stats. This one is a biggie. If you could hire your own (or promote retiring players) then every job they do could be reflected by their stats. And when a team sacks their manager they have someone who could possibly step up. I'd personally love to be managing LFC and have Stevie G by my side once his playing days are over.

• Send the ass man out for discussions with a potential transfer. Again this could be counteracted by not having an ass man for an amount of time. But the benefit would be that the player is a bit more adjusted to life at the club from day one.

• Take team talks and deal with the media. This one would require some additional features to begin with, but then the ability to pass off these jobs o the ass man would add realism and also make you think about which ass man you hired.

• Offer advice during a match. Happens all the time irl (watch any match and you'll see a manager discussing with his assistant quite regularly throughout). Again this could be based on the ass man's stats relating to tactical knowledge.


Obviously, for the assistant manager to be of more use to the FMH player we're going to need more base features to allow us to pass on these jobs to the assistant. Currently the game doesn't go too far into detail (it's a pick up and play game after all) but with players crying out for more detail and more features we're going to need a loyal right hand man to help us with these new potential features.

Thanks for reading, don't forget to leave a comment (you'd like your own content to be commented on right?) and please do offer more suggestions to get the discussion rolling. What would you like to see from the assistant manager?

This post has been promoted to an article

[Dec]

Nice read Lee. The range of money to bid that would be sensible would be really good, I like that. Then you can judge whether the other team are being unrealistic too.

[Ashez]

Great work Leroy, I think you've hit the nail on the head .

I also would like to be able to select an assistant but at the same time I think it would be a shallow experience. What I mean by this is i think we'd only have a limited number of options (like players who become managers) and the second the PA and such of these assistants are revealed it'll loose it's charm, as unlike players it would be so important picking the right man that taking risks and testing assistants could end in disaster.

On a plus side it would add an amazing edge to a career if your Assman stats were somehow based off you, so you train him as well then one day he leaves and becomes your rival. Hmm I think I'll stop now as that sounds like food for thought for another article .

Btw minus points for no Billy Gunn reference

[UKFootballScore]

Fantastic article mate really enjoyed reading through that and agree with pretty much all of it

[Ganesh]

nice article

maybe a better assistant manager will make your holidays more happier and will get some realistic results

[Ashez]

The results need to be bad tbh as people should play the game and not sim for results.

[dutchfmh]

Great article this made me thought about a career on fmh15 thank you Lee-Roy

[UKFootballScore]

I don't understand why they even have the holiday feature in all honesty!

[Ashez]

I can think of a few reasons

1. Skip to start/end of the season or periods without matches

2. When International manager only

3. If you're unemployed

4. To skip injuries like Leroy said

5. When you've won the league so you can skip the remaining pointless games

Just to name a few.

[Ganesh]

exactly poor results after winning the league makes your profile look bad

[Lee-Roy]

Cheers for the feedback guys. I knew I wasn't alone in being underwhelmed by the assistant manager.

Having a scouting team at your disposal (however basic the feature is) is a step in the right direction for this topic. It's a scouting team now, but it could be a whole backronin a matter of years.