Wave goodbye to your social lives, families and friends, as Football Manager 2022 is right around the corner. Now just days rather than weeks away, we are seeing and hearing about the various new developments in the latest edition. In this post, we have picked out our 3 most intriguing and exciting announcements from the last few days, and we have no doubt that even more is going to get us interested ahead of release.

The game has made a major announcement of introducing the women’s’ game into future releases, however this won’t be occurring for some time yet, next year at the earliest. Additionally, we have lost naming rights for one of the worlds’ biggest sides in ‘Manchester UFC’, however the announcements from the team at Sports Interactive have been clearly working their socks off on the latest game, and appear to have really listened to the players with what they (we) want to see.

With the official release date announcement of the 9th November, with the Beta expected for release in the days leading up to this, now’s the time to get planning your first save.

This post will kick off a new season at NextGoalWinner where we will be posting just about as much Football Manager 2022 content as we can manage. If there’s a specific feature, or challenge you’d like us to take on, let us know over on Twitter (@NextGoalWinBlog) and we might take it on. With that in mind, let’s get into this years game…

Data Hub

Let’s face it, Football Manager players are usually nerds for stats and analysis of data, and the new ‘Data Hub’ is perfect for those (lonely) Thursday evenings reviewing your sides’ 1-1 draw away in the 3rd round FA Cup. With the new tab offering massive insight and knowledge of your teams’ previous fixture and general performance, whether xG in the last game, successful passes or even a new introduction of momentum in games to show how your side play through the 90 minutes. In a similar vein to top sides in real life, this data is useful to make those adjustments, tactical tweaks and highlight areas/players of weakness who can be improved.

It’s a really interesting feature which will be exciting to delve into, although maybe not one for the casual player or those who don’t want to lose their entire weekends reading game reports and sketching out new ideas like Pep Guardiola and Marcelo Bielsa on fast forward.

Deadline Day Revamp

To be honest, no matter how obsessed you are with Football Manager, it’s the transfers that bring the most drama and excitement, and this year’s game bring an update to the most dramatic and exciting day of them all, transfer deadline day. With the timer counting down, you will feel the pressure of getting those last minute deals done, and with agents offering players and watching the headline signings around the world come through, it will be all out ‘wheeler dealing’ on those final few moments before you’re stuck with what you’ve got. All the drama that could bring Jim White to tears.

Player Roles

The final feature we have spotted for the new release is for a new player role option in centre-back, as it now appears that you can instruct your side to play with ‘wide centre backs’. The definition of this is “to stop the opposing attackers from playing and to clear the ball from danger when required. However, unlike standard central defenders, the Wide Centre-Back is encouraged to stay wide in possession and support the midfield more like a fullback.” Being brought to many fans’ attentions by Chris Wilder and his Sheffield United side from the last 2 years, it allows your defence to take on a new dimension and particularly with the changing role of full-backs, having an attacking option from the centre-backs means you have the option to play much more free-flowing attacking styles of play. It will take some working out to prevent your goal being exposed constantly, however it’ll be the first player role I try for sure, and I am very excited about it.