#FM14 Video Blog - Tech (English version)

Hello and welcome to today's FM Friday feature blog for Football Manager 2014. Here we’re looking at some major changes to how news is delivered to you in the game, and how you interact with it. Your inbox is where you spend a lot of time dealing with club matters and we felt it was time to make some key changes that will help streamline your role as manager. To start with, the entire inbox panel has been revamped to make this area of the game clearer, easier to navigate around and prettier! The

re is a much larger right side panel on the screen to display lots of information applicable to the mail item, keeping more detail in one place so you don’t need to navigate around the game to get this information. In addition to the brand new style of email and news, we’ve colour-coded news items based on category so that it’s instantly clear which messages are related to each category. You can now scan through your inbox and pick out important items easily and see what each item relates to. Tr

ansfer and match news items in particular are much more obvious to make sure you don’t miss any important information throughout the season. The biggest change to the inbox section is what information is displayed within items, and how you see it. Email items now features more info, graphics and action buttons to allow you to deal with many club matters direct from your inbox. Here are just a few examples… Scout reports for an upcoming fixture are now shown inside a mail item rather than linking

off to a separate screen, so you can immediately check-out the opposition from your inbox. Scout reports on players now contain a list of players with recommendations on every player scouted, plus buttons so you can shortlist or make an offer for any of the players. When you’re offered a player by an agent you will be able to see his attributes within the email so you can immediately assess whether he might be of interest. Match analysis is now plugged into mail item stories for post-match repo

rts and you can click through to view more details on the player of the match in addition to the usual match report, overall match analysis and match confidence which looks at the board and fans’ reaction to player and club performances. We have also added more media speculation and excitement that comes with manager movements. When a manager is sacked there are now ‘next manager odds’ which shows who the most favoured managers are to takeover at a particular club, you can also see who the leadi

ng candidate for each job is on the job centre page, which shows who the likely next manager will be. You can also see odds for the next manager to get sacked with the three most likely sackings for each division being listed in the news item when a manager is sacked. Another advantage of the new info item layout is the ability to set a player’s individual training focus within the item. If your assistant suggests your striker should work on his finishing, you then have the option to instantly c

hange the focus of your striker’s training and the intensity. Loan and transfer acceptance and rejection dialogue now appears in your inbox, so you can accept and reject multiple offers directly from your inbox. There is also a new element of interactivity within mail items with the introduction of useful tools such as sortable tables in place of a static list e.g. when you receive scout reports on players and you can now sort the list by their ability stars. There are many other new additions t

o the inbox that give you as manager more control over your squad and backroom staff than ever before, such as; having the option to meet your squad when you first meet your assistant manager and introduce yourself to the players. You will also receive emails from medical staff when players who you currently have out on loan get injured. This will allow you to make the decision on whether to recall the player so they can be looked after by your own medical team instead, if the details of the loa

n deal allow this. Another new feature is when advertising for a new member of staff - should you not receive an applicant that you believe to be suitable, new applicants will be highlighted when the second round of applications come through. This will make it clear to you who the new applicants are whilst also keeping previous candidates in case you fail to find anyone of a higher standard. In the past the season summary has been very top-line but this year you will receive much more informatio

n on how teams and players have performed during the season. The season review now picks out key moments of the campaign. There are many other new features within this area of the game as well, such as; transfer clauses will now specify the amount of total appearances needed overall to meet a clause in a news item, so you can avoid paying these fees if you don’t have the budget. Registration news will remind managers of which players in their squad aren’t currently registered to play and also wh

en a player confirms his retirement there will now be an action button to save the player’s history, so you can keep a record of your greatest players. The email section in FM14 is better than it has ever been - more streamlined, but with extra variety in messages on similar items and logical ordering of emails with completely consistent action buttons throughout. It’s all designed to save you time and bring all areas of the game together on one screen to provide you with a fully integrated and

interactive experience when you are playing Football Manager 2014, i.e. now when multiple players return from loan spells these will all appear in one mail item. And finally, we’ve given the News homescreen a redesign in a way that segregates key news, events, transfers and results in a much more easily digestible layout. We hope you’re going to enjoy the FM experience even more with these changes. Be sure to keep up to date with both the FM Twitter feed @footballmanager and my own @milessi acco

unt for even more new feature announcements everyday between now and the release of the game to keep you fully informed of what you can expect from Football Manager 2014. You can also find a weekly update on our website at www.footballmanager.com