Football Manager 2012 release date announced, scouting detailed

Sports Interactive recently announced that the latest entry in the veteran Football Manager series would be out later this year. Eurogamer have the date. It's October 21. The release date announcement was revealed in the first entry in what will become a series of blog posts providing detailed info on FM 2012's new features. Today, Sports Interactive studio director Miles Jacobson discusses improvements to the scouting system, and talks about the unique inside access the studio has to professional scouts in the field.

"We've very luck at Sports Interactive to have a large number of fans in amongst football, including many scouts who, with permission from their employers, give us the real scouting reports that they put together for teams when watching them for the manager." writes Jacobson.

This real world data from stadiums and training grounds around the world is one of reasons FM one of the most detailed sports sims around. Using those databases packed full of authentic information, you'll be able to assign a scout to analyse an opposition side. They'll come back with a full report detailing that club's best players in each position. You'll also be able to use reports to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of clubs against one another.

With all that intelligence under your belt, it should theoretically be easier to put together a strategy to beat tough opponents. Over time, FM 2012 will monitor the success of this strategy, and return at Tactic analysis.

"Tactic analysis gives you information on how you've fared when using specific tactics, with information on how many times you've started with those tactics, how many minutes you've used them, how many goals you've scored & how many you've conceded. As well as a breakdown for goals scored and conceded against different rankings of team – higher rated, similar rated and smaller rated. Along with a paragraph of analysis," writes Jacobson.

There's even a separate goal analysis tool, which will collate information on where your goals are scored from on the pitch, which players and positions tend to get the most assists, and more.

As well as scouting, Football Manager 2012 will get updates to the match engine, and a series of tutorials to help guide new players into the world of football management.

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Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.