Top 10 Must See Football Manager Blogs & Those You Should Avoid

by Chappers 23/06/2013 | 1:1410 Posted in Best Stuff, Football Manager 13, Hype n News, Opinion

Top 10 Must See Football Manager Blogs & Those You Should Avoid 3.25/5 (64.93%) 280 votes

Like us you probably spend loads of time scouring the web looking for awesome FM ‘stuff’ to better your game knowledge and performance, but how do you know who to trust?

We’ve cut the ‘muts’ from the ‘nuts’ and put together our top 10 Football Manager blogs to save you the time, check out our favourites and the page on their site that we think helps you the most.

Our job with this blog is to give real, quality information that actually helps you as FM players, for that reason we have also found a couple of blogs that we don’t think offer you much in the way of advice.

Those of you with a keen eye will see that we haven’t even put ourselves at the top of the list, but we will get there.

Disclaimer: The stats below are estimates, I am happy to update based on fact if you are the owner of these sites.

No 1. My Passion For Football Manager

An all-round posse of information on all aspects of the game, loads of content on pretty much any FM subject you can think of.

Estimated Daily Traffic: 4700

Recommended Content: Pretty much all of it

Positives: Loads of original content that helps everyone from noobs to veterans, loads of authors so content diversity and some great downloads

Negatives: Subscription model is poor, come on guys, feedburner is not the future. I want exclusive stuff man and perhaps be a bit more friendly to avid readers.

Our Rating: 8.5/10 – Top dog at the moment but needs some more ‘tweaks’ to stay there.

How it could be improved: Exclusive subscription platform and ‘premium’ content.

TOP10 football manager blogs - my passion for football manager

No 2. Push Them Wide

A plain, clean and inviting website with tonnes of unique, focused and dedicated content. Pushthemwide.co.uk is all about the content and that’s what counts with blogs, in my view if it continues it will be the best around come FM 2015.

Estimated Daily Traffic: 700

Recommended Content: Deep winger tactics

Positives: Clean, crisp and full of unique opinion and tip based content.

Negatives: Quite a few website bugs (mail me for a list) and I can’t see images in Chrome. Needs more ‘stickiness’ with widgets, menus and options to keep looking around the site.

Our Rating: 8/10 – Awesome content but after reading an article you don’t know where to go next, give me some options, related content, menus etc.

How it could be improved: On-page functionality is a must, the theme is epic and I love the simplicity but a good theme is useless if people can’t find what they want.

TOP10 football manager blogs - push them wide

No 3. Football Manager Old Skool

Owned, run and edited by Thomas Paine this basic but awesome looking blog deserves more attention.

Estimated Daily Traffic: 1400

Recommended Content: How the defensive triangle works

Positives: Great looking, clean and some great unique content with the suggestion of more downloadable add-ons to come.

Negatives: Bit too much ‘personal’ FM experience rather than actionable tips but still gripping stuff.

Our Rating: 8/10 – Very good-looking, well written and an all-round cracking blog.

How it could be improved: More frequency of posts and more ‘tip’ related articles.

TOP10 football manager blogs - old skool

No 4. Football Manager Blog

FootballManagerBlog.org is a great looking site with massive depth and numerous downloads, guides and tips to help the discerning FM player

Estimated Daily Traffic: 3000

Recommended Content: Awesome kit section

Positives: In-depth with loads of unique content and guides to help every level of FM player

Negatives: No real visible personality, guides can be a bit picture heavy and I don’t see the relevance/point in the live score feeds etc.

Our Rating: 7/10 – Has a good base to grow though feel they may have run out of ideas.

How it could be improved: Get rid of the irrelevant stuff and create content focused on helping the user rather than generated by them.

TOP10 football manager blogs - fm blog

No 5. Football Manager 14 (us, woohoo)

A site set up and run by avid FM players, targeted at one thing alone, helping football manager players enjoy the game more through unique and actionable content.

Estimated Daily Traffic: 3000

Positives: Looks pretty good, diverse content and a fast-growing fan base.

Negatives: Content can be too generic for some, new site so still some technical ‘hitches’

Our Rating: 7/10 – Lots of potential and growing at 15-20% day-on-day.

How it could be improved: More authors to spread the content and be more specific, needs some downloadable content and social media following

TOP10 football manager blogs - fm 14 blog

No 6. Football Manager Analysis

A great small, dedicated site focusing on the in-depth technical aspects of the game, awesome for people like me that love a picture and analytical writing.

Estimated Daily Traffic: 1100

Recommended Content: The Linking Midfielder

Positives: Very niche orientated content that is well ahead of the rest in terms of analytical evaluation.

Negatives: Not enough content or regularity in the posting, old-school theme.

Our Rating: 7/10 – An awesome site for those ‘thinkers’ and ‘tinkerers’

How it could be improved: Up the content levels and change the theme, this could easily turn in to one of the best blogs around.

TOP10 football manager blogs - fm analysis

No 7. Football Manager Story

A comprehensive site with lots of unique and useful content, a thriving community and loads of social followers.

Estimated Daily Traffic: 10000

Recommended Content: Custom scout area

Positives: Good online following with a combined 2000 followers through email and RSS, really good forum area which is full of helpful FM players.

Negatives: Advert-heavy in some areas and no real ‘face’ of the website.

Our Rating: 7/10 – A good site that will keep you entertained for a long time but could do with a face-lift.

How it could be improved: Add some personality and cut out the ads that can’t be making much money anyway.

Screen Shot 2013-06-27 at 14.07.03

No 8. Aid The Boss

A slick website with unique and actionable content, only problem is finding it and the amount of it.

Estimated Daily Traffic: 3500

Recommended Content: Regen Dates

Positives: Good looking, loads of potential and what content there is is really good.

Negatives: No ‘stickiness’, lack of depth and no personality.

Our Rating: 6.5/10 – Could be very good in deed but currently very thin on the ground, what is there is awesome though and worth a look.

How it could be improved: More content, more content and more content.

aid the boss - fm blog

No 9. True Football Manager

Owned and run by Vitaliy Mokosiy, a die-hard FM fan since 1996. Established in 2007, the blog offers guides, downloads and tips based on Vitaliy’s experiences of the game.

Estimated Daily Traffic: 1500

Recommended Content: Best Cheap Players

Positives: Some awesome downloadable content, great face-packs and badges and owner who puts lots of time in to the site.

Negatives: Theme is cumbersome, I imagine this leads to a high bounce-rate. I’m not keen on all the content specifically related to Nottingham Forest.

Our Rating: 6.5/10 – A very good site, lots of good unique content but needs to be more user-friendly.

How it could be improved: Change the theme and deliver content that is targeted at a wider reach, promote the downloads section more!

true football manager blog

For those of you with a keen eye you would have noticed that there is only 9 in a top ten list, I want to open the floor and let you guys decide a blog that deserves to be in the list, comment below with your favourite!

Now for the bad and ugly

Theres 3 blogs that I want to point out here, all for the same reason really.

A few years ago these 2 blogs were good, gave good advice and helped people out but now they are never updated, lack any sort of use for anything and deserve to be avoided at all costs.

Even the older posts that I looked at had content that was either copied or didn’t work anyway.

So on that note please avoid:

http://fm.theoffside.com/

http://theziggyfm.culshock.net/

The other one that comes with a warning is www.footballmanagermad.com, a good principal on the face of it and claims to give proper tips but all the content I found and read was very old-fashioned (like the template), regurgitated and pretty useless stuff. Avoid.

Drawing Conclusions

I’m an honest man and I can really appreciate the work that has gone in to the My Passion For Football Manager site, it’s a great resource and not putting it in the number 1 spot would be lying and an injustice to the people I am here to help, you, so it gets my vote!

So there you have it 10 great and 3 not so great Football Manager blogs to get your juices flowing ready for the next FM.

What do you think to my list? Get involved in the comments below.

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Chappers

Hey, I'm Danny and I run (try to) this FM appreciation site. We do try to be constructive and talk about some real conversational subjects but occasional we may drift away from the subject slightly! I hope you enjoy this site, if you want to chat you can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, alternatively just leave a comment below. Cheers!

Cleon

I get a lot more traffic than you estimate fwiw (chalkboard diaries), try quadrupling your estimate and you’ll be a bit closer

120k views in less than 2 months isn’t small traffic at all.
- https://footballmanager14.co.uk/ Danny Chapman
  
  Hi Cleon,
  
  Thanks for the feedback, I assume Alexa hasn’t caught up with your awesome growth yet then!
  
  I will change the stat above.
http://www.footballmanagerblog.org/ Football Manager Blog

Hi Danny, Igor from FMBlog here.

First of, thanks for a honest review. Secondly, we started working on some changes on the site to improve our visitors experience, even on the things that you mentioned above, hopefully all will be ready before FM14 comes out. Also, we are on .ORG not .com domain as you wrote. Plus, we were for some time setting up our rewards program that is now up and running.

As a token of appreciation, we’ll give your site a shout-out on our official Facebook page and on our FM14 fan page, twitter and YouTube channel.

You have a good looking site, and I truly hope you’ll make a great success, welcome to the FM-blog family! Keep up the great work.

P.S. can’t believe that for Espen :/ not cool from his side.
- https://footballmanager14.co.uk/ Danny Chapman
  
  Hi Igor,
  
  Thanks for the message. Apologies for the domain error, will correct that right away.
  
  Espen has seen the article and got in touch, water under the bridge (he just needed a coffee!).
  
  Thanks a bunch for your kind words and your site looks great, I did sit there last week thinking “shit, I wish I thought of that first”. Would love to hear how it goes!
  
  Good luck with everything and give me a shout if you ever do any similar reviews. Always game for some constructive criticism.
  
  Keep in touch, perhaps we can swap guest-posts or something, get some traffic going both ways.
  
  Thanks again.
  
  Danny
Darren

I knew this post had caused some stir but I wasn’t sure why, now I can understand. Do you actually think Footballmanagerstory gets that few readers? I can confirm that the minimum we get a day is more than four times that amount, on good days its more than 8 times that amount! And to comment on how much money our ads make is naive also. Got to say Dan, you’re not going to make many friends within the community posting up so many guesses and controversial pieces of information. I would appreciate it if you’d pull FMS from the list altogether, we don’t want to be linked in with posts that don’t provide facts. Thanks in advance.
- https://footballmanager14.co.uk/ Danny Chapman
  
  Hi Darren,
  
  Thanks for the message, I do apologise for any offence caused and I have updated your traffic estimate.
  
  It is only my opinion and meant as constructive criticism from a user of yours and all the sites above for many years.
  
  At the end of the day I am not here to make friends if it involves lying to them and my users to keep them happy, I am here to provide my opinion and my advice to the visitors to my site.
  
  I’m happy to update the post based on any facts that you want to provide.
  
  Just to conclude Darren, it’s not good-practice telling a fan, ‘customer’ and ‘appreciator’ of your site that he’s wrong to have an opinion. Whatever happend to the customer is always right?.
  
  Danny
  - Darren
    
    I never once said that you are wrong to have an opinion, I never said I had a problem with your opinion either. I just don’t think its right to guess at random numbers and claim a site makes limited money rendering their adverts pointless…you have no idea how much it costs to run our site or how we balance that with advertising.
    
    In addition, the customer isn’t always right, not when they are using false numbers and making stuff up. As mentioned, we want nothing to do with this post, it has caused a rift within the community (not ourselves, we were just bothered about the figures) but we don’t want to be a part of it. What you have written about other sites may be your opinion but none of its based around facts and the majority of it is actually contradictory.
    
    So I repeat, please take our site off this list altogether. And in future you may want to show a bit more respect to the veterans of the FM scene when writing about them, again, I am not referring to myself or FMS as bar a few wrong numbers and naive assumptions the review was kind and well worded I’d say. However, there are a lot of things within this post that I can tell and know for a fact have offended people, not because they don’t like the truth, but because of how its been written and their sites have been unfairly portrayed.
    
    Again, just to clarify, Footballmanagerstory would prefer it if you’d remove us from this list completely, I see no reason why you would refuse us that, as you won’t lose of gain anything either way.
    
    Thanks again,
    Darren
  - Darren
    
    Danny, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t delete my comments just because you don’t like what I have to say. I won’t repeat it all again, as that wasn’t for your readers, it was for you. But I will repeat, take us off this list! We want nothing to do with it!
    
    As mentioned I never said you are wrong to have an opinion, I just said if you want to have one, you MUST use facts, not guesses! Nice to see you edited your own comment as well as deleting mine, pathetic!
Ruud from TSMPLUG

Hey Danny,

you got this superb site in here mate, But only thing I can point my finger is why in the hell did you used 14 in your domain. It should work for Fm14 but what about next year. big mistake IMHO.

As far the content and traffic of this site, well it wll keep growing torwards the release of the Fm, than it will overflow i am sure. great work however, keep it up and I know i need english lessons
- https://footballmanager14.co.uk/ Danny Chapman
  
  Hi Ruud,
  
  Thanks for the comment, really appreciate it!
  
  I’m targeting ’14′ specifically to be as ‘tight’ to the niche as possible and providing only super-relevant content. I have plans to target 2015 in the same way but in the mean-time I am working on a ‘hub’ site for all things FM.
  
  Hopefully you’re right, it’s going well so far so fingers crossed!
  
  Thanks again Ruud.
  
  Danny