To cheat, or not to cheat, that is the question

As a manager there will come a time in your career when the decision of whether you should bend the rules or not when it comes to your game.

A tumble in the box

Cheating or Modifying, (as some like to call it) is essential. There are a few ways to Modify, firstly when it comes to scouting, checking the players potential ability (-10 is the best) on the editor before hand (you know your desperate if your trying this) or using a save game tool.

Another way is by using a real time editor, here you can change the game whilst it’s running, magically heal a decrepit player or the whole squad, change your finances or just alter attributes to make your team a team of GODS.


Fair Play Award

The purest will always maintain that cheating is not how the real managers do it. You don’t see Fergie or Wenger scouting out potential stars by just checking their potential ability. Or you don’t get Moyes and Avram miraculously healing their injury prone squads with one click. So why should you on Football Manager?

It ruins the realism of the game, takes out the sense of pride and achievement of saving West Brom from relegation or taking Lincoln City into Europe.

Cheating doesn’t give you that same satisfaction of finding “the next Michael Owen” and then flogging him to Real Madrid for £50m.

Decision Time

There is some justification in Modifying, Football Manager can be so hard and so unfair. Why do both my star strikers get injured at the same time? If I just use this… and… Ta Da, all fixed, all better, no one will ever know! But if you want to stick with realism just don’t do it and for my Blyth Spartans save I definitely wont be doing it.

You can also reverse cheat though! A very good friend of mine is an ardent Leeds fan, he took charge of their biggest rivals, Manchester Utd (The Scum, as he calls them) and got them relegated! Flogging the best players and buying conference players for massive amounts on huge salaries thus bankrupting them.

If that isn’t putting Modifying to a good use, I don’t know what is?