Football Manager 2021 Review: 9 Ups And 3 Downs

Taking a look under the hood of the hotly-anticipated next entry in the famed FM franchise.

by Andrew Pollard
Football Manager 2021
SEGA

For football games, one of the key dates on the calendar is the day that the new Football Manager is released.

Ahead of its official release on November 24, we've been lucky enough to take an early look under the hood of Football Manager 2021.

With several new features added into the familiar mix of the FM series, Football Manager 2021 has the tricky task of building on something so brilliant and somehow making it better. It's a tough ask, yet FM21 manages to take the ball and run with it - with there so much here for football fans to indulge in.

To put it out there clearly from the get-go, the version of FM21 played here is an early beta version of the game that could well have changes made to it by the time the game is officially released later this month. That said, Football Manager 2021 is already looking like being one of the very best football games to have come around in a long, long time.

For the purpose of this review - and to get a more balanced view of different levels of the game - Premier League side Everton and National League team Wrexham were the teams played as.

With that in mind, then, let's break down the good and bad of this impending release.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.