Hello again, and welcome to the 2nd Football Manager™ 2009 blog

As promised earlier, now is the time to reveal in one handy place all the new features that we've already announced for Football Manager 2009 via the YouTube video and the Football Manager podcast. It's quite a long list, with some big, and some small but nice things. This is not everything that's new in the game, just what we've announced so far, with more to be announced in the coming weeks on these very blogs, the podcast, and likely a few other places too.
Anyway, enough from me, and onto the game...
First off, the stuff that was announced in the original press release and the announcement video. You can tell that these were written by someone who writes press releases for a living, compared to the descriptions of the latter features.
3D Match Engine – This year’s match engine has seen more testing than ever before having been extensively beta tested in Football Manager™ Live for the past year.
The famous Football Manager match engine can now be viewed in full 3D with motion captured animations the players. Sports Interactive has been working on the 3D match engine with the support of SEGA Japan’s Sega sports team who provided the motion capture data.
You can now watch your matches in 3D from multiple camera angles and re-watch any part of the match by fast forwarding and rewinding the action using a new match time bar that flags the key moments in the game.
The old 2D view of the match engine is still there, especially for those people whose computers aren’t powerful enough to take advantage of the 3D views.
TV View – Watch your matches in new full screen TV view and customise your match day screen with widgets to view the information you need as a football manager, be it player performance, match action zones, pitch radar, latest scores and many more.
Assistant Manager Feedback – Pre-match and in-match feedback from your Assistant Manager on how the team is performing and your player’s motivation levels, as well as hints on how your tactics are working and how you could outwit the opposition’s tactics.
Improved Media – SI have worked hard to reflect the greater impact the media has been having in recent years on the world of football, in the in-game dealings with the press. The game now features more news stories, more detail and greater media interaction than ever before, creating an even more realistic simulation of the football world.
Press Conferences – Attend pre-match and post-match press conferences with local and national journalists and build up relationships with them over time, but choose your answers carefully because they could come back to haunt you in the media at a later date.
Transfer System – Completely new and re-written transfer system code, providing an even more realistic simulation of real-life football transfers.
Transfer Rumours – View the latest news on what players are being speculated on, and who’s said to be interested in securing their services.
Board Confidence – Following on from its addition in Football Manager™ 2008, board confidence has been expanded and improved. In addition, the board will now also feedback to you on your squad harmony and the club’s stature in the football world.
Preferred Moves – Train your players to learn ‘preferred moves’ to add to their game. For example, train central defenders to not dive into tackles, or wingers to do stepovers before crossing the ball.
Female Manager – For the very first time you can now play as a female manager. All of the text in the game now also has a female gender so the game represents female managers and staff in the game in the correct gender.
Realistic Finances – SI have listened to feedback from all of their researchers to try and model every single financial area of the game correctly for each country, including transfers, staff wages, budgets, ticket prices, season tickets, competition bonuses and club sponsorships.
Updated Competitions – Fully updated for the new 2008/09 football season with all the latest league, club and player data, featuring over 5,000 playable clubs from over 50 countries, and around 350,000 players and staff from around the world, drawn fresh from the famous Sports Interactive database.
Widescreen Support – As a result of usability testing on Football Manager 2008, this year sees widescreen support for the game for the first time, as well as lots of tweaks to the user interface for easier navigation.
The night of the announcement, I made another little announcement on our forums (community.sigames.c om) about improvements made to the player progression area of the game...
Player Progression / New-gen Improvements - Improvement to the player progression module to give more realistic player development, more variation in the player learning curves, wonderkids starting as better players to ensure that clubs realise their worth and more effect to the attribute development based on the training schedules that are set.
Then a day later, there were some specific new features for the MLS in the US of A.
MLS new features - Designated player rule added to ensure that the teams with more financial backing are able to sign one player outside the designated wage fund, or two by gaining another designated player slot in a trade. You can also offer your designated player slot to other clubs.
Allocation funds can also be offered to other MLS clubs in a trade, with $1 of the Allocation fund being worth $5 in transfers between MLS teams.
Transfer budgets now only change when an allocation is awarded - these are awarded in 2 ways in FM09, if a team fails to make the play-offs, and if a MLS team sells a player (the former is $300,000 and the latter limited to $500k)
On the first podcast was some more info than I'd revealed before on player progression, but that's up above in there, so four more features were announced on top of that.
In Depth Player Ratings - Player ratings now out have a decimal point, for more indepth analysis on how a player has performed

Position viewer - On the tactics screen, indication on how good a player is in a specific position using a traffic light system, so if a player can play as right back, but it's not his best position, it might be an orangey yellowey colour, red is he's rubbish there, and green if it's his best position (with apologies to people who are colourblind - we couldn't find a better way to do it).
Injury time scorers - Game now shows injury time goals with "+x" rather than them all being in the 90th minute
AI team trials - AI manager can now sign players on trial
Now, let's test whether people are actually reading this or not. Something that was seen by some in screenshots, but hasn't actually been confirmed by me that I can find and is therefore kind of a new feature on this blog...
Trial days - Scoutable and viewable match where players released by their club play against each other arranged by the players union.
The 2nd podcast revealed the following.
Enquire to loan a player - Sends a virtual fax out to all clubs to see which players they would be prepared to loan you. Can also be done per club
Feeder club improvements - The ability, once your board trusts you, to ask for a specific feeder club/parent club.
Holiday job returning options - Option added to apply only for jobs in the top playable division, bottom playable division, lower division jobs, and any job.
Distrance run - A new stat that shows how far a player has run per match
Team report improvements - Team report now suggests new players for weak areas of the team
Awards - Team awards now have a history rather than just showing the last winner. Likee the best XI, they can be combined into an overall team for all the years stored.
Average ratings - Players who play less than 10 minutes no longer get ratings that can take down their average rating
B Teams - Are now treated are affiliate clubs, rather than reserve teams for teams in countries where they might have 2 teams in different first team leagues (Spain / Barcelona, for example)
Stadium expansion - Now starts after last home game of the season, so stadium expansions are built quicker
Age and transfer rules - Age rules for different competitions are now displayed for each comp as are transfer rules, such as the French "Joker" rule
Still reading? Good! Quite a long list so far, but more to come...
In podcast 3, I revealed another 7 new features...
New sound - Added new sound effects to the match engine
Referee watch - Pundits comment on refs performance in the post match screen.
Reject all loan offers - Option to reject all loan offers when a bid comes in, rather than having to go through each bid individually.
Retired squad numbers - Squad numbers that are retired in real life are retired in the game. User can retire squad numbers after they've been at a club after many years of service.
Inactive team improvements - Ensuring that inactive teams play enough matches, so that players on loan get full first team seasons.
Improvements to player nationality module - Players now gain nationality after x years and become eligible to play for nations after y years (depending on individual rules in countries).
Pre game injury history - Players now have past injuries from pre-game in their histories
So, that's your lot for now. I make that 40 (counting the time bar in the 3D bit as its own feature) which is quite a lot really. Around another 30 odd still to announce though. And there'll be some surprises in the game which we will wait for people to discover...
Thanks for reading - I'll be back later for a different kind of blog.
Cheers

Miles