I unironically think I’m pretty good at Football Manager. By this point, I really better be – I’ve been playing this game for anywhere between 200 and 400 hours a year, every year, since I caught the bug sometime around 2008. But then in each of those years I do always play as Manchester United, the team I support, and unlike the United of the real world, it’s easy enough to see things regularly going well with a bit of clever spending and tactical nous – in my last save, I just won the quadruple with United, alongside a full “invincibles” season in the Premier League.
If that all sounds like a bit of typical United fan bragging, however, worry not! A severe humbling follows.
After more or less ‘fixing’ the club – the task I set myself with each new game, and in doing so clearing all of the main challenges of my most recent save – I’ve been looking for a bit of a new spin to fill the void while we wait for FM25. Lo and behold, here’s real-world Manchester United agreeing to bring in a new manager, the widely admired 39-year-old Ruben Amorim of Sporting CP. The perfect new challenge has arrived. And so, in light of the excessive interest in how his teams play – and a wonderful 4-1 spanking of Man City in the Champions League earlier this week that deserves its own celebration – I thought I’d see how Amorim’s already famous 3-4-3 translates to United in the world of Football Manager.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Part 1: Figuring out how Amorim plays
If you’ve been broadly plugged into the football world over the last week or so you’ll be fully aware that Ruben Amorim likes to play 3-4-3. In fact, he’s only played with a standard back four – the default for the English Premier League – in his very first three games as a manager several years ago, before ditching it forever.