Greg Johnson | Why I Love FM

Our latest instalment of Why I Love FM features Greg Johnson, editor-in-chief at football.london who talks about how his love of Football Manager has taken him across the virtual globe.

What do you look for when selecting a team? 

There are three types of saves I always go for; starting at my favourite club, starting unemployed (but with high badges and experience) or going into whatever job is available. But my favourite kind of save is the one I sadly lack the time to do properly these days (but which sticks in the memory) and that’s starting off with no experience, no badges and as many leagues loaded from around the world as my computer can manage and seeing what happens.

What’s the first thing you do when you start a save? 

Go to U23s and U18s and promote all the high potential players and then demote any players from the senior squad who don’t have the star ratings or attributes I want, putting them all on the transfer list. Then it’s figuring out the right tactic to make the most of what I’m left with.

How do you approach transfers?

Spend on key positions (if there’s any money), pack the squad with youth.

What do you look for in players? 

Work rate, technique, first touch and mental attributes.

Favourite type of player? 

Versatile attackers and complete midfielders. 

Greatest managerial achievement? 

Starting off unemployed. Getting the job at Weymouth. Winning promotion to Conference Premier at the first attempt. Resigned after relegation, thinking I’d done enough to get a gig higher up the English pyramid. Instead I moved to Shelbourne, then bottom of the Irish First Division. Turned them into the dominant side in the Irish Premier in a six-year spell, getting into European latter stages and dethroning Bohemians, who had a stranglehold on the title. 

Then moved to Argentina, again a side struggling in the second division, after failing spectacularly in Russia and then Preston (a rollercoaster spell that lasted just a couple of weeks), turning them into a solid top flight side, doing enough to catch the eye of Mexico. I led them to glory playing ridiculously fluid football after success in the Gold Cup. The USA had become a very good team under the AI’s control and I actually had to beat them in the semi-finals of the World Cup too. We were beaten by Italy in the final. 

Cagliari were clearly watching, though, as they offered me the manager’s job. We won seven Serie A titles in first eight years, with three consecutive European titles starting from my second season. Turned them into the best club, playing the best football, in the world, eventually built around Fausto Esposito, the greatest wonderkid I ever managed. All that grand success mattered more because of the journey.

Best signing? 

Fausto Esposito. A mixture of all of the world’s best in one player. Italy’s greatest ever footballer. The talisman of Cagliari, the dominant force in European football throughout the 2020s and 2030s.

Best player you’ve managed? 

Ryan O'Halloran. A ball-winning midfielder in the Shelbourne youth ranks with only half a star rating.

I’ve never seen a player make more out what little they have on the game. He once scored a fluke goal from 55-yards out and was otherwise an absolute trooper who defied the odds and his own poor potential to dominate Irish football. My second choice would be Ravel Morrison. In another journeyman save, ended up building my Blackpool side around him after a troubled career elsewhere. He became an England international and helped take my side into the fight for the top six.

Best newgen? 

The aforementioned Fausto Esposito… or a six-foot-five Brazilian playmaker called Jefferson. He had the grace of a winger with the presence of a centre back. 

Why do you love FM? 

It’s the sliding doors experience where by you can build this weird parallel football universe which takes on a life of its own, eventually. You can take over a team that you think is being badly managed in real life to see how they’d perform with your own ideas of how they should play or even start as low as possible and work your way up to the top after decades when the landscape of football is unlike anything we would recognise today. FM is best once the AI has taken your save down avenues you’d never expect, with or without your influence. That’s why it’s so re-playable.