Football Manager 2010 Walkthroughs - Handling the Press

A big part of a football manager’s job is communicating with the press. This allows the club to maintain a relationship with the fans beyond match day as well as providing opportunities for the manager and key players to give their opinions on previous and upcoming matches.

Pre and post-match press conferences are often held in Football Manager 2010. These can either be attended by yourself or your assistant, and they take the form of 3 or more questions with multiple choice answers. Each answer will affect your team and opponents in a different, subtle way...

There are also other options for interacting with the press, such as commenting on opponents or players.

Before most games, your club's Press Officer will alert you via the news screen that assorted sports journalists are in attendance and wish to hear from you before the match kicks off.

If you agree to this, you are then taken to the Press Conference screen. Here you are asked several questions, to which you offer a response from a multiple selection. Be careful how you react here because poorly considered answers can have a bad effect on your team.

Here’s an example question and possible answers:

What a comeback! To completely turn the game around and win 2-1 against Tranmere in the Coca-Cola League 1 must be very pleasing?

• I am absolutely ecstatic, it was a fantastic comeback

• I am pleased with the manner of the win

• I am not going to discuss my thoughts

• I have some concerns with our performance despite the result

• I am not best pleased with the performance even though we eventually won

You can also choose to not answer, respond with a “No Comment” or even storm out of the press conference, although who knows what the reaction will be from the papers?

Alternatively if you don’t fancy the questions – send your Assistant Manager!

There are often stories in the papers in the real world about managers saying how much they admire a particular player from another club, and these stories can often lead to players leaving their teams to play for the admiring manager.

Football Manager 2010 gives you the option to make comments of this type, from vague tidings of admiration (“Tell the press you are in awe of Ronaldo’s ability”) making out an out declarations that you want to sign the player. Interestingly this can be used to unsettle a player as well, most useful when the player in question is signed to one of your close rivals...

You can also release comments on other teams – this can be done via the Squad screen by utilising the Next Opponent Comment and Previous Opponent Comment options in the Media Comments menu.

The comments that can be made here are all either negative or positive ones and can be used to play mind games with your opponent as well as affect your own players. This needs to be done carefully however – the last thing you want is for your players to disagree with you...