u/Specialist_Train4579

I’ve been thinking about the old Championship Manager games from the 90s.

I know nostalgia plays a big part. We were younger, football felt different, and finding some random cheap striker who scored 40 goals felt like magic.

But I don’t think it’s just nostalgia.

Those games were so addictive because they were simple, quick and easy to understand. You picked your team, signed a few players, changed the tactics, hit continue, and suddenly it was 3am.

Modern FM is obviously miles deeper and more realistic, but sometimes I feel like it has become a bit too much.

Too many meetings.
Too many staff jobs.
Too many promises.
Too many press conferences.
Too much training detail.
Too many little things to click through before you get back to the football.

The old CM games left more to your imagination. A player could become a legend from a few lines of text and a goals column. You didn’t need a thousand screens to care about him.

So what did those games actually get right?

Was it the speed?
The simplicity?
The mystery?
The fact you could finish seasons quickly?
The focus on results, transfers and league tables?
The way your imagination filled in the gaps?

And if a 90s-style Championship Manager was made today, what should it look and feel like?

Not just old graphics for nostalgia, but the same addictive feeling in a modern game.

What would you keep from the old games, and what would you take from modern FM?

Does anyone actually enjoy doing training, or do we all just pretend?

I don’t mean that as a dig at FM exactly, because I get why training is the way it is now. It’s more realistic, it’s deeper, and there probably are people who love squeezing every little edge out of the schedule.

But for me, it’s one of those features I respect more than I actually enjoy.

Older training was obviously much simpler, maybe too simple, but at least I understood what I was doing. You had a rough idea of whether you were focusing on fitness, tactics, attack, defence, youth development, whatever. It felt readable.

Now I sometimes feel like I’m managing a calendar instead of a football team.

There’s team training, unit training, individual training, mentoring, rest, sharpness, fatigue, tactical familiarity, coaches, physios, match prep, recovery sessions, chance creation, chance conversion, attacking shadow play, defensive shape, transition press, transition restrict…

And after all that, half the time I still just end up downloading a schedule or leaving it to the assistant.

That feels like a bit of a problem. Not because training should be dumbed down, but because the decision making should feel clearer.

For me, the ideal version would be somewhere in the middle. Give me meaningful choices, but make them football choices.

Are we working on set pieces because we’re poor at them?
Are we trying to make a young winger more complete?
Are we resting the squad because the fixtures are piling up?
Are we drilling defensive shape before playing a better team?
Are we sharpening the forwards because we keep missing chances?

That’s the stuff I want to think about.

I don’t really want to micromanage a full week of sessions unless the feedback is strong enough that I can actually feel the difference.

Maybe I’m just lazy with it, but I’d love training to be less about building the perfect spreadsheet and more about setting a clear football direction for the squad.

Was it actually better when it was simpler, or is this just nostalgia talking?

We play with 5 people so want to play a good mixed tactic, we alternate between 1 or 2 strikers, I know tactics depends on personal, AI level etc but are there a few go to tactics to build a base from?

Been messing about on CM01/02 recently and one thing that struck me was how simple some of the systems were, but somehow they still felt meaningful.

Take tactics for example. The WIB/WOB system was incredibly straightforward. You weren't spending hours tweaking 47 different instructions and worrying whether your left back should overlap, underlap, invert, sit narrower, hold position, or whatever. You moved players around, changed a few instructions, and got on with it.

Same with training. It wasn't particularly realistic, but it was easy to understand. You could look at it and immediately know what was going on without needing to become a part-time sports scientist.

I'm not saying CM01/02 was better than modern FM overall, because FM does loads of things brilliantly, but I do wonder if some of the simplicity got lost along the way.

Curious what other people think.

What's a feature from the old CM/FM games that was simpler than modern FM, but that you actually preferred because of it?

EDIT: For those asking about Championship Manager 01/02

You can legally download CM 01/02. Check out this site for it: https://champman0102.net/