Football Manager 2021: Worth the upgrade with winter?

To be or not to be, is Football Manager 2021 worth the upgrade with winter? Review based on the FM21 beta version.

For fans who have been stuck at home this year, we’ve probably spent more times managing virtual teams than we have watching real ones. The lack of anything resembling normality in most corners of the world is a major problem, with COVID-19 forcing most of us to adapt our lifestyles and our hobbies almost entirely. With that being the case, you might feel all coached out for the upcoming release of Football Manager 2021.

Related: COVID19 in Football Manager 2021

Releasing on the 24th November, but with FM21 beta already available, you might not be sure if buying a new edition is really going to be worth it for you. Why, then, might a new season bring out the best in you? Let's take a look at what we learned from the beta.

New tactical tweaks

As realistic as FM2020 is, it does have some exploits that you cannot help but use to your advantage. As such, a new fm21 match engine brings with it new opportunities to try out things and see if your ‘cheat tactic’ has been dealt with by the developers.

You will find that this helps to push you to new territory.

New challenges and teams

The new season brings with it newly relegated giants, newly moneyed minnows and all manner of other fm21 challenges. If you are looking for a challenge to try out, you might have exhausted all of the options in the 2019-20 calendar. Why not try out something new instead? You might find that the new database has a team who has been re-introduced to an active league or similar.

Who knows? You might find a sleeping giant to rebuild!

Greater player interactions

This feature tends to ebb and flow when it comes to Football Manager. Some years player interactions can be great…other years it can be less. FM2020 was a bit up and down, so this year with the introduction of some new features has helped us enjoy player interactions once again.

The new body language features, in particular, are a good starting place, helping you to get to understand your players through their movement as much as their responses.

The addition of gestures makes it feel like you're there when you're doing the team talk. When signing a new player, you have the option to welcome him with open arms, or pat him on the back, for example. These are all nice.

Better tactical variety

New roles and styles are always possible in each Football Manager iteration, so this does give you a good chance to play around with new ideas. Every season, we’ll see some kind of new feature included that helps to make tactics even more flexible, and for FM21 that new feature is the player role animations on the player instructions screen, which was one of the most welcomed new features by the FM community.

I've been asked many times in the last few weeks whether we've improved role descriptions.

We've gone one louder than that...

There are now animations for every role, so you know exactly what you're asking your players to do when building a tactic #FM21Features pic.twitter.com/wNJwL8PZwr

— Miles Jacobson (@milesSI) October 29, 2020

Even more database files

Just as the community loves to add new features to FM2020, expect the same to come with new and improved editor tools when they come out with the full release of the game.

We've found a winner !!!

Thanks for helping me decide which season to make for FM21. I have combined all the votes from the three polls. See the results in the picture below.

I can't wait to get cracking with the 2001/02 DB for FM21. Thanks for taking part in the voting 🙏 pic.twitter.com/vsF8ZbAwcY

— tHeMAdSCienTiSt Fm (@MadScientistFM) October 1, 2020

This should allow the ambitious among us to remake the European competitions, to add in missing leagues, and make all manner of changes that you simply would not have thought of normally. 

And the one we can't wait to get our hands on this year is the @MadScientistFM retro database, this year it will be the recreation of the legendary CM 01/02. And yes, To Madeira and Tsigalko will be included!

With more files than ever before to play with and more options than ever before, who knows what season you’ll enter into this year?

Community feedback on the beta

Lastly, but arguable the most important factor to make the winter upgrade from FM20 to FM21 is the community feedback on the beta version of the game. 

With over 2700 user reviews already been given on the fm2021 Steam page, 95% or 2520 reviews are very positive and remember that this is still the beta phase and not the fully released game. This only goes to prove that considering all the circumstances faced this year, the developer team achievement to produce one marvellous game.

If you are ready to jump on the Football Manager 2021 bandwagon then this is the right time as the pre-order discount offer will last for only a day. Get your copy and earn yourself up to a whopping 40% discount on your purchase, and you'll also get a £21.99 worth of Football Manager 2021 Touch absolutely free. Offer expires after the release date, November 24th.