This year’s Scottish football season has seen performances that defied their preseason odds, both positively and negatively. Teams have overperformed and underperformed. Their reasons for doing so will differ. Football is a forgiving and a cruel sport. A team’s performance does not always match the result: they could be creating bundles of chances to score while not conceding much, but because they aren’t scoring and their opponents are then they’ll lose, and the opposite is true too. There are some achievements, though, that are fully deserved – ones expected, ones surprising. There is a consistent feature of sporting successes and failures, though: there are fans who believe they can replicate them or avoid them. This is where Football Manager 2021 comes in.
Football Manager 2021
The Sports-Interactive produced football management simulation game is widely considered the best on the market – it is also the only one of its kind on the market. Critics and fans praise its depth of play, with tactics, training, and player recruitment enabling varied results for every save-world created. Communities have built themselves around the game. They exchange tips, stories from their management, and compete against each other’s achievements. Communities try to support and out-do each other. It’s especially true for those online, where details and knowledge can be expressed and spread far easier. It is not limited to a single industry or a single game; it’s applicable to those who play at GGPoker UK to those who collect Funko figures. All anyone can do is try to be better than they were and better than someone else.
In the spirit of competition, real-life inspires challenges, especially when, as mentioned, some believe they are better suited to fulfil certain duties or some simply enjoy a challenge. Here are some challenges you could try on Football Manager.
Rangers
Rangers have become Scottish Premiership Champions for the first time in ten years. They’ve stopped their arch rival Celtic’s streak of consecutive title wins. It wasn’t a close contest either. Rangers blew the league away. Thirty-three games played so far and no defeats, scoring seventy-eight goals and only conceding ten. It’s an astonishing feat. McGregor has saved them many goals; Tavernier has been hugely productive on the attacking end, with many fans thinking he deserves a call-up to the England national team; and Morelos, Roofe, Kent, Hagi, Aribo, and many others having stellar seasons. They will be attracting the interest of other clubs outside Scotland. Steven Gerrard, the Gers coach, has gotten the best out of his team with a Christmas-tree formation with an emphasis on pressing and being direct. Replicating this success will not be easy.
Hearts
Hearts of Midlothian F.C. had a rough 2010s. They dealt with financial turmoil and relegation from the Premiership. Right now, they’re in the Scottish Championship. This is not where the club wants to be. They’ve found stability hard to come by with ownership transfers, administration, the up-and-down performances due to managerial and squad changes. The challenge is to bring stability, get them promoted, be shrewd in the market, get Hearts back to the top. This is one of the more traditional Football Manager challenges that players are drawn to: re-establishing a notable team.
Queen’s Park
Queen’s Park are the oldest club in Scotland and the only Scottish team to play in the English F.A. Cup Final (1884 and 1885). They play at Hampden Park in Glasgow which is also home of the Scottish national team. They are a historically significant club who are playing in the lowest tier of Scotland’s Professional Football League. This is a long-term challenge. It’ll see an ambitious gamer take a small squad with next-to-no budget from the depths of Scottish football to the top, returning Queen’s Park to be the thorn in the side of major city rivals Rangers and Celtic. The manager will see through a total upgrade of the club playing in a stadium already prepared for much more.