Football Manager 2014: 5 Challenges Everyone Should Try

5. The Director Of Football Challenge

This is a challenge that would push even the best of us virtual managers to the absolute limit. The idea of this challenge is to relinquish almost all control over your club and leave it in the hands of your capable or possibly not so capable Director of Football. Now you have read that, I would imagine the majority of Newcastle fans have now skipped straight to the 'next' button. This is one of the most simple challenges and to a certain extent is comparable to being a 'coach' on the continent. This does not mean that it will be easy to do though. In order to get underway with this challenge you need to pick your team. As always, the smaller the team the harder the challenge so choose accordingly. Once you have chosen and added yourself or your footballing alias as manager, you need to access your 'Staff Responsibilities'. This is located on your team tab from the toolbar along the top of your screen, although I'm sure all you FM veterans know that. Once there you will need to perhaps reluctantly hand over all responsibility to your Director of Football, by assigning him to each task via the drop down boxes. He will now be in charge of 'Staff Recruitment', 'Transfer Incoming', 'Transfer Outgoing', 'Contract Renewals', 'Scouting' and 'Youth Development'. Essentially you are tasked only with using your tactical wit and inspirational man management in order to bring about success for your chosen team. It is very much a challenge and at times can be both infuriating and pleasantly surprising. The challenge doesn't have specific goals other than trying to achieve success whilst working under these conditions. It is obviously subjective depending upon which club you have chosen to manage but give it a try it can be a really enjoyable project.