It seems to be that time of the year again – out with the old, and in with the new iterations of popular football management games. We’ve recently covered Top Eleven 2017, which takes place within a fictional universe and pits human-controlled team against human-controlled team. Football Manager Mobile 2017, on the other hand, takes you to the real world of association football, allowing you to choose any team from leagues covering 15 countries around the world. And that includes all the major European leagues, as you set your tactics, negotiate transfers, and shuffle your lineup to ensure yourself of the best winning combination. Aside from user interface and scouting improvements, this game’s new version adds new transfer options, more disciplinary choices for misbehaving or underperforming players, as well as the addition of Polish and Turkish leagues.
As this is one of the most in-depth, if not the most in-depth football/soccer management simulators out there (may it be the PC or mobile version), there’s a ton of things to learn in this game. But we hope to ease your transition, in case this is your first time playing Football Manager, either on PC or on mobile. We’ve come up with a complete Football Manager Mobile 2017 strategy guide for you, so read on if you need some help in the various aspects of this game.
1. Tips For Choosing Your Club
Your choices of club in this game are as close to limitless as you can get. But if you closely follow any one of the many leagues available in this game, your first instinct may be to choose your favorite team. You may also be thinking out of the box and considering managing a team from a league you’re not familiar with. Or you may be that player who finds no challenge in starting out with a perennial powerhouse, and would rather start with a lower-tier team. As we often say these days, your mileage may vary. But in most cases, you shouldn’t try reinventing the wheel in your first go-around, especially if you’re a newbie to the FM/FMM franchise.
Most of the time, it would be best to go with your first instinct – that is, manage your favorite club, or one that you, at the very least, are very familiar with.
You may root for Manchester United, for instance, but could go for any other Premier League team if you so desire, if you follow the league in general. What you want to avoid is choosing a team that is completely unfamiliar to you; FMM 17 has a steep learning curve, and you wouldn’t want to complicate things by choosing a team you know precious little about.
2. Don’t Go Fancy With The Tactics
This is probably best applied if you’re a new player just getting acclimated to the FM/FMM experience. More often than not, you should keep those tactics as simple as possible, and not resort to any fancy strategies just because your boring, basic game plan didn’t work the first time around. You may find out that the problem wasn’t the tactics per se – you may have one or more players with poor morale, or your shots may have been coming from the wrong direction.
3. Sometimes 4-4-2 Is The Best Formation
When it comes to formations, you shouldn’t overstretch yourself either. Thinking of a defense-oriented formation such as a 5-4-1? Want three strikers up front, instead of the usual two? Sometimes you’re better off going with the good old fashioned 4-4-2. You can shake things up a bit if you please, but the basic 4-4-2 will often be good enough for you if you’re playing in the lower divisions.
4. Take Advantage Of The Bosman Rule
What is the Bosman rule? For those who aren’t familiar with this all-too-common association football term, this refers to the ruling where players can join a new club without their old club being compensated financially, provided their old contract is up. It’s similar to unrestricted free agency in other sports, but not the exact same thing – for one, you can sign a player for free under the Bosman rule if he’s got less than six months remaining on his contract, or less than three months if you’re controlling an English team and trying to sign another England-based player.
The best way to look for Bosman transferees is to search for those who have one year or less left on their contract. Shortlist the good ones, so you can be notified if their old club doesn’t offer them a new deal, or if they refuse to re-sign.
5. How To Make Some Money On The Transfer Market
If you’re controlling a powerhouse club and are a bit lacking in terms of cash flow, you might want to try making money through the Bosman ruling. While you won’t sign every potential Bosman rule transferee, it’s easy to sign good players through this rule, or sign backups without having to pay any currency. And if those backups are young enough, and might not have much of a future in your squad considering its current lineup, you can sell them once they become eligible for transfer. Use the money you earn via the sale of the player, but don’t use it on signing new players, if you can; this would oftentimes be better used on upgrading your stadium or training facilities.
6. Winning Won’t Happen Overnight – Accept The Losses
You can’t expect to win all the games, and from time to time you may find yourself upset by a seemingly weaker team. But then again, you may pull off the upset against a stronger opponent, so it’s all fair. If you happen to be struggling at some point, it’s fine as well – everyone starts out somewhere. But it’s important to take those losses for what they are, and see what went wrong so you can make the necessary adjustments in the next match. Keeping all this in mind, you can rely on your assistant manager to help you make those crucial in-game decisions, but it will mostly be on you to make the adjustments you have to make.
7. Use Your Scouts To Find Good Players
Football Manager Mobile 2017 has a huge database of players – it’s not as big as the PC version’s database, but you still get 15 countries and all the leagues within those countries. That’s literally thousands of players, and it may be overwhelming, especially if you’re a first-time player. But that’s why your scouts are there – you can use them to find the players you need, and the players who can make a difference for your team. And even without the scouts, you can use the search tool and set your filters so you can find the players you need.
8. How To Succeed With A Lower-League Team
Now you may eventually find it easy to control a top-tier team in a top-tier league. How do you go about this if that’s your goal in your FMM 17 game? The first thing to do would be to set up your database so that there’s at least one country that’s close to the same level as the league your team is currently in. That would allow you a good number of players you can look at if you need to make changes to your team. Next, check your board expectations, so that you know just what management is hoping for, and plan around meeting those expectations.
When checking your squad, that’s where you can start separating the wheat from the chaff. Are there any players whom you feel may be overpaid? Release them if they can’t prove themselves in a few games. Make sure you’ve got a deep bench, with ample backup support in case someone gets hurt. Set up your tactics based on your current lineup, and not based on the lineup you hope to form. And don’t change your tactics just because you got drubbed in your first game, or give up on your save game right then and there. Save the game, see what you may have done wrong, and don’t sweat it if it doesn’t have much bearing on your board expectations.
9. Can You Improve A Lower-Tier Team Through Transfers?
The answer would be most definitely. But you shouldn’t spend money just because an interesting, potentially useful player is available. Spend if you have a need to fill in your lineup, and take advantage of the Bosman rule we mentioned above so you can sign quality players for free. And when sealing the deal with your new players, include the Big Club Release clause so they don’t ask for too much money, and renew the contract if they’re able to make an impact.
10. Who Are The Best Wonderkids In The Game?
Wonderkids, as they’re called, are those young players (aged 21 and below) who could potentially become the next Lionel Messi, Neymar, or what-have-you. They won’t always reach such iconic levels, but if you look at their potential through the Football Manager (for PC), you’ll be able to spot them easily, as they’re the ones with PA (potential) ratings of 170 and above, with 200 being the highest. You may also see negative values – a -95 rating means a player’s PA may be between 160 and 190, -10 means between 170 and 200, and -9 means between 150 and 180.
Once again, we must caution you that not all Wonderkids will pan out as superstars. A lot of it depends on how well you train them and how well you manage them when they’re on your lineup. So with that said, here are some of the top Wonderkids in Football Manager Mobile 2017, arranged by position and with all relevant information included – their team, nationality, age, value, and their PA ratings.
Goalkeepers
Gianluigi Donnaruma (A.C. Milan) – Italian, 17, £7m, -10
Predrag Rajkovic (Maccabi Tel Aviv) – Serbian, 20, £1m, 170
Forwards
Julian Brandt (Leverkusen) – German, 20, £16m, 172 (Left Winger)
Kingsley Coman (Bayern) – French, 20, £23m, 173 (Left Winger)
Anthony Martial (Manchester United) – French, 20, £31m, -95 (Striker)
Leroy Sane (Manchester City) – German, 20, £25m, 176 (Left Winger)
Bernardo Silva (AS Monaco) – Portuguese, 21, £23.5m, 170 (Right Winger)
Midfielders
Dele Alli (Tottenham Hotspur) – English, 20, £30m, 170 (Central Midfielder)
Marco Asensio (Real Madrid) – Spanish, 20, £13.5m, -95 (Midfielder/Attacking Midfielder)
Ousmane Dembele (Dortmund) – French, 19, £21.5m, -95 (Midfielder/Attacking Midfielder)
Leon Goretzka (Schalke) – German, 21, £16.25m, 173 (Central Midfielder)
Adrien Rabiot (Paris Saint-Germain) – French, 21, £11.5m, 171 (Central Midfielder)
Renato Sanches (Bayern) – Portuguese, 18, £27m, 175 (Central Midfielder)
Defenders
Andreas Christensen (BMG) – Danish, 20, £14.5m, 171 (Central Defender)
Jose Giminez (Atletico Madrid) – Uruguayan, 21, £17.5m, 171 (Central Defender)
Alessio Romagnoli (A.C. Milan) – Italian, 21, £12m, 173 (Central Defender)
Luke Shaw (Manchester United) – English, 21, £13m, 170 (Full Back)
Jonathan Tah (Leverkusen) – German, 20, £15.5m, 175 (Central Defender)
This wraps up our strategy guide for Football Manager Mobile 2017. We’ve covered different aspects of the game, but if you believe there are some more tips or strategies that we should include in this guide, let us know in the comment section. In case you know some more tips and tricks for the game, don’t hesitate to share them with us!