Best Moments in Football Manager

Football Manager is one of the biggest selling games around. Since it began life as Championship Manager back in 1992 the series has sold over 7 million copies, won several awards and been named in at least 35 divorce cases. A game that started out as a glorified spreadsheet with flashing commentary, and that even today still sees the player spending much of their time looking at screens filled with numbers; many people wonder what the attraction is and how it can steal so many hours of time from seemingly normal people. With this in mind, and with the release of Football Manager 2013 in a couple of weeks, here are some of the best moments that keep me coming back every year.

1. Managing the club you support
One obvious reason to buy the game every year is the updated squad lists for each team. The game usually doesn't comes out before at least October, giving the developers time to see what moves are made in the summer transfer window and update the squads. It also means they can see how players and teams perform at the start of the season and adjust their stats accordingly. Knowing this, as soon as I've installed and loaded the game for the first time, I can't do anything other than start a save with my team, to see how good (or otherwise) the squad is, and how far I can take them.

Top tip. For added realism, turn off transfer budgets in the first window so that no team can buy players before January and squads stay similar to real life.

2. Watching your star striker score 20+ goals a season
I'll take goals wherever I can get them; if all members of my squad can chip in with a few then I'm happy. However, there are few better feelings than watching your strikers scoring prolifically. At the moment I'm playing a save as Napoli, and Edinson Cavani is riding high at the top of the league scoring charts. It is truly a joy watching him put away chances, grabbing hat-tricks, and scoring important goals that pull out results for the team.

3. Finding out about the stars of the future before anyone else
I've been playing Football Manager since about 1999 and the amount of players I heard about before they make it in real life is ridiculous. Having scouts find players like Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero, Arturo Vidal, Hatem Ben Arfa, Gonzalo Higuain, Eden Hazard, the list goes on. Signing them as youngsters, watching them develop into stars in the game, and then seeing the same thing happen in real life is a nice feeling, and you feel like you know a player a little bit when you see them in real life for the first time.

4. Watching a youth player you've trained become world-class
Its great signing big stars, bringing in a marquee players that excite the fans and boost shirt sales. Even better though, is bringing youth players through. Watching a player you've developed carefully from the age of 17 or 18, over several seasons turn into one of the best and most valuable players in the game is time well spent.

5. It never has to end
Won everything there is with your team? Made it into the manager's hall of fame? Do it again with a different team. Manage a big team and make them the best in the world, or bring a small team up from the lower leagues, or manage an international team to the World Cup. One of the absolute best moments in the game is winning everything with a team, doing a Jose Mourinho and resigning, ready to move onto a new team, where it all begins again...

So those are my best moments in Football Manager. Agree? Disagree? Maybe I've missed something out? FM fans let me know.