Addendum.

Communication and Psychological ‘Warfare’ has been growing enormously since FM 07, last not least due to the huge number of feedbacks, questions and developing squad management as an own category of tactics and training at FM-Britain. This has been the result of many fellow tacticians discovering the essential influence of interaction on morale and consistency of individual players and whole teams. There will be two versions of Communication and Psychological Warfare ’08, this one and a much-condensed version as easy access, in addition to several tactical articles and Tactical Bible topics. It is next to impossible to cover all important facts of man-management in one article, even considering the much extended length.

I am fully aware that it has to sound strange claiming this would be a ‘short overview’ on man-management after reading all those pages, but in fact it is. As the detailed experiments on pre-match media made by wugster have proven, it is entirely possible to do much more research on many of the details given as an overview here, and an in-depth investigation of this very small area of communication is possible and even more so, worth the effort and providing valuable results. I will be more than happy if Communication and Psychological ‘Warfare’ will inspire many more in-detail investigations of the multitudinous options.

This growth in depth also reflects the constantly increasing complexity of the game. Last year I said thank you for reading until here, this year I have to say it twice if you managed to read the full version. You must be mad about the game, but I hope you did not waste your time.

While I hope that those who enjoy the communication side of the game found some new ideas, the most important purpose is to give advice to those who are absolutely lost with the numerous options of man-management. The good news is, it can be acquired very easily, but the bad new also is: this is a part of the game, and this part will not become smaller, on the contrary, the importance of everything related to player morale – and the effect of player morale on player performance – will rather grow steadily. Simply because this is a part of the game, of sports and of real life, and there is no way back. The ‘radio days’ are gone and will not come back.

SI has been trying to make things easier, and the improved assistant functions should help you very much, but there is not much hope to find ever again some super-tactics and win game-in game-out with squad morale on the ground. Even if you do not like this aspect, you should at least know the tools and how to use them to gain an advantage at certain stages of the season.

This year Communication and Psychological Warfare is published several months earlier than for FM 07, and it also means that many new features are only tested roughly and may need revision based on patch changes and long-term feedbacks. I would already like to say thank you for your feedback in advance.

Links and References

Tactic Building Basics

Tactical Theorems and Frameworks ’08 - TT&F
Tactical knowledge remains the core of the game and can only be completed (or ruined) by man-management. Our sister thread offers in-depth knowledge and maybe the most systematic approach available since many years.

Since this year the patch history has slowed down progress, also the link to Play FM as important basic knowledge of tactic building: Play FM: Tactical Design and Management Strategy

Fundamental Football Manager - FFM
Rashidi’s systematic approach offering many alternate, but also common solutions to TT&F

I do not want to put any other theories down, but TT&F is FM-Britain core stuff and our TTT colleague Rashidi has a long tradition of presenting his approach as well, so I hope you do not mind that I refer to those two exclusively.

Squad Management topics of the FM-Britain Tactical Bible

Squad Management I
The first article of the complete Squad Management series of the FM-Britain Tactical Bible.

All of these articles are available for free reading on the FM-Britain homepage. If you want to read more details, updates and post questions or feedbacks, please visit the Tactical Bible Forum.

Part I: Youth Development - bringing youth through or selling them.
Part II: Subs, Rotation, Team Building - Increasing your squad depth, integrating new players with less frictions.
Part III: Staff, Media and Player Interaction - A key to consistency.
Part IV: Team Talks - A key to maintain your performance or turn games around.
Part V: Squad Discipline - How to avoid bans and finishing games with 10 men.
Part VI: Tutoring - How to get the most out of your young players.

Articles and threads on man-management

Extra-tactical Factors
A very good introduction into the importance of several aspects of man-management by Millie.
Team gelling and tactical consistency
Examples given based on my experience with rebuilding Zaragoza
Pre-match Comments - An experiment
Excellent detailed research by wugster on the effects of pre-match media interaction, especially helpful regarding different reactions of individual players.
Making extra money from players
Sock’s guide how to use your squad to build up economic success.

Credits

There is a long list of people who have contributed to CPW 08, but first of all I have to thank all those FM-Bers who helped us progress by posting encouraging feedbacks, questions and constructive criticism. Also I would like to thank those who gave a constantly fantastic rating for the first version of Communication and Psychological ‘Warfare’ at the FM-Portal. I have some doubts the long version will receive such an enthusiastic feedback, but I do hope that the scheduled short summary will meet your expectations in the same way.

Without putting anyone down, I would like say thank you first to those who are working closest to me:

wwfan – for your incredible achievement of developing TT&F over four years, but also for your tremendous support of this project, last not least by giving up a small, but very important part of TT&F and handing it over to CPW (Communication and Psychological ‘Warfare’).

Millie – for being one of the first to recognize the potential of CPW and linking in again and again together with wwfan to the first article. Your advice, input and articles have been crucial in developing the category of squad management at FM-Britain.

The members of the Tactical Think Tank and the FM-Britain staff, but especially those making core contributions to the Tactical Bible Squad Management topics: crazy gra, Millie, JP and wwfan, additionally I have to mention Abramovic and Asmodeus for adding short but important remarks to this article.

crazy gra and Millie for their constant editing and proof-reading ‘on-the-fly’ when working on CPW 08. I would not have made it without you, and I frankly admit that of course you had a lot to do.

Call me a loquacious and sentimental guy, but I feel that all of those mentioned above are contributing to a site that does have something like a ‘team spirit’, and I am grateful to be a part if this.

Last but not least I would like to thank wugster for his incredibly detailed experiment on pre-match media interaction. It was inspiring to read your thread and your findings influenced the current version of CPW. Since you already announced your next experiment, I am expecting you to keep me busy.