Backroom staff in Football Manager

Backroom Staff starting point

This article will be the starting point for every Football Manager regarding the backroom staff. Here we will be covering the more high-level areas of the staff section in FM and you will be able to find links to all our seperate and more in-depth articles regarding backroom staff in Football Manager.

Backroom staff roles

Football Manager has a wide range of available backroom staff roles. These roles are there to help you as a manager to run the club every day. The roles vary from director roles, who only act if you want them to and coaching roles. The coaches train with the players every day and will help develop their skills throughout their careers.

The following Backroom staff roles are available in Football Manager:

• Assistant Manager
• Head of Youth Development
• Coaches (including Fitness and Goalkeeper)
• Director of Football
• Technical Director
• Chief Scout and Scouts
• Chief Performance Analyst and Performance Analysts
• Recruitment Analyst
• Loan Manager
• Head Physio and Physios
• Head of Sports Science and Sports Scientists

Signing the best staff

It is your job to ensure your club has the best possible staff that is available. This will depend on certain areas, including club level, reputation, finances and number of backroom staff members you are allowed to sign. At small clubs boards will not allow you to sign 40 coaches for both youth and senior teams, while the big teams are able to create a very big backroom staff.

Usually finding and hiring staff in Football Manager was one of the standard tasks of the manager (you). This could be a very time consuming job and that is where FM has stepped in. There are now options to delegate some of your tasks and responsibilities to various members of the backroom staff to help you with your day to day work. This includes signing staff, renewing contracts of your staff and even helping you finding the best staff.

What to look for when signing new staff

When you want to sign a new staff member there are some areas to look at. These are:

Attributes
The most obvious one of all. The first thing you will be looking at are the attributes of a non-player. Every staff role needs their own set of attributes. In the in-depth articles we have created for every staff member you will find more information on their essential attributes.

Also have a look at our Backroom Staff Attribute guide in which we explain every single attribute.

Personality
Also very important is the personality of a staff member. It is advised to always look for a positive personality. The personality of a non-player can be seen in their profile.

Real non-players have eiher a basic or positive personality. Newgen coaches could also have a negative personality.

Learn more about personalities in Football Manager.

Preferred formation & tactical style
It is really important that staff responsible for player development and player recruitment share th same tactical preferences as yourself. For example: a Head of Youth development tends to sign players who fit in his own tactical preference. It would be a shame if his preferred formation is different from yours and you end up with players you can't use in your tactical style.

Preferred job
Have a good look at the Preferred job of someone you want to hire. This could affect his demands during contract talks but also his ambition. A coach who wants to be a manager could be looking for a new job after some time.

Staff attributes

The profiles of non-players are built in the same way as the profiles of players are build: using attributes. The attributes work the same as they do for players. Every attribute has a possible rating between 1 and 20, with 20 being the highest and 1 being the lowest.

Woudl you like to learn more about the attributes and their descriptions? Have a look at our Staff Attributes Guide.

The profiles and attributes of non-players are divided into 4 different categories. These are:

• Managerial
• Coaching
• Scouting
• Medical

Within these categories Managerial and Coaching include the same attributes. However, Football Manager splits these as a manager needs additional attributes.

All the attributes are ranked 1 to 20 with 1 being the lowest and 20 being the highest. The level of these attributes will determine the quality of the staff member. High attributes will deliver better results, for example a more accurate scouting or medical report.

If you sign coaches with the best possible attributes, you might be able to reach the famous Five Star Training ratings.

Overall level of your staff

Use the staff overview screen to get a good view of the current level of your staff. This area allows you to compare certain areas of the backroom staff to the rest of the league. It shows the highest and lowest average in your league and then shows how you score on that average. This makes it easy for you to spot the areas you should be improving.

It will be your first aim to score ‘above average’ on every category but it is even better to try to have the highest average in all categories.

Managerial / Coaching Attributes

You (the manager) and the coaches work with the players every day and different attributes are needed to ensure that the players can develop to the best of their ability. The training is divided into different categories and they all need their own set of attributes.

However, every coach needs three essential attributes to begin with. Without these, a coach will never be able to get the most out of the players. These are:

• Determination
• Motivating
• Level of Discipline

Every staff search you want to do should begin with these three attributes. In the Football Manager community these attributes are also referred to as DDM.

Coaching attributes

There are ten different attributes for coaches. Most of them are generic, but some are used by specialist coaches such as the goalkeeper coach and fitness coach.

• Attacking
• Defending
• Fitness
• Mental
• Tactical
• Technical
• Working with Youngsters
• GK Distribution
• GK Handling
• GK Shot Stopping

Also, some of the attributes will need to be used in combination with others. For example Attacking and Tactical are needed for the Attacking Tactical category in training.Combine these two with the needed DDM attributes to determine the overall quality of training a staff member is able to deliver.

Get some of the best backroom staff members in our Shortlist area where we have several downloadable shortlists available.

Mental Attributes

Mental attributes are needed to give your staff member that little extra edge. A good coach needs good Determination, Discipline and Motivating while a good Scout needs Adaptability to ensure they will be able to handle themselves properly on long scouting trips.

There are five different Mental attributes in Football Manager:

• Adaptability
• Determination
• Level of Discipline
• Man Management
• Motivating

Most of these are obvious or have already been mentioned. Man Management is a peculiar attribute as this isn't needed for either coaching or scouting but can be useful if you decide to delegate certain tasks to staff members that effect player happiness.

Scouting attributes

The scouting attributes are used for many of your backroom staff members. They are also referred to as 'knowledge attributes' in the game and are essential for scouts as they will have to advise you on ability and potential of possible signings. However, these could also be used by your own coaches to create Player Report Cards. And finally Judging Staff Ability and Negotiating are needed for a Technical Director.

There are six different Scouting attributes in Football Manager:

• Judging Player Ability
• Judging Player Potential
• Judging Staff Ability
• Negotiating
• Tactical Knowledge
• Analysing Data

Medical Attributes

The fourth and final are the Medical Attributes. These are important for both your physio's and sports scientists. The physio's are used to keep your players fit during the season and making sure that they will recover as fast as possible when injured. A Sports Scientist is used to inform you on the fitness levels of your players and the possible risk of injuries.

There are two different Medical attributes in Football Manager:

• Physiotherapy
• Sports Science

Staff area

The main area for your staff is the Staff Overview page. Access this area by pressing Staff in the left side bar in Football Manager.

This section is the starting point for everything you want to see about your own backroom staff. Starting with an overview of the three 'teams' within your staff.

These are:

• Coaching team
• Recruitment team
• Medical Team

Here you can see the staff who deal with the first team on a daily basis. You can see for each team which staff roles you have at your disposal and you can also see whether there are still places available to fill.

Team Comparison

Here you can see how these three teams can be compared to the staff of other clubs in your league. The bars show how your team scores in a certain attribute and you see both the highest and lowest average of the competition. Try to score above average at all times, although you will always have to strive to contract the best staff.

At the bottom of the screen you also have links that refer to the staff of your youth (U18 & U19) and reserve (reserves & U23) teams.

Board Request

You can also make a board request directly on this page. You click on the icon in the team box and you can immediately choose several options. These are:

• Increase Wages for different staff members
• Increase number of allowed staff
• Place advert to fill vacant position

Responsibilities

The Responsibilities area will give you a complete overview of all responsibilities within your club. Here you will be able to find people responsible for, among other things, extending contracts, completing transfers and finding new staff. Most of these responsibilities will be assigned to you by default and you can decide which of these responsibilities you want to delegate to someone on your staff.

There are two sections in this area: Manager & Staff. On these tabs you get an overview of the responsibilities designated to you or your backroom staff.

The Football Manager staff is mainly there to support you as a manager, so use them wisely. If you are managing a large club, running a club can be very time consuming. By making smart use of your staff and delegating responsibilities, you will have more time to spare to focus on your players' performance.

How to change responsibilities

Staff > Responsibilities

From the dropdown that appears select the area you want to change a responsibility. Areas with various responsibilities are:

• Board
• Staff
• Advice and Reports
• Scouting
• Transfers and Contracts
• Media
• Training
• Tactics
• Match

You can delegate or change a responsibility by clicking the Delegate button next to the responsibility. This will automatically select the most suitable staff member for this responsibility. It is also possible to handpick a staff member for a certain responsibility. Just click the arrow to open the dropdown to receive a selection of staff members to pick from.

If you have successfully delegated one of your tasks, it will no longer show up on the Manager tab and will be shown on the Staff tab instead. Also, not every staff member can take on each responsibility. For example: hiring and firing a Director of Football can only be delegated to another Director or the Chairman. It is not possible to delegate this task to a coach or scout. However, it also not possible to ask your Assistant Manager to assign scouts or sign new backroom staff.

Board

In the board tab you won't be able to make any changes to the responsibilities. Here you can see who is responsible for your job (hiring and firing the manager) and who will provide updates on facilities and financial operations of the club.

Staff

The staff section is split into three different sections:

• General
• Contracts
• Advice and Reports

These are the three most important sections you can delegate to your staff. Think of responsibilities such as making the Manage Team selection, but also the search and signing of new staff members as well as firing staff members.

The Advice and Reports section includes responsibilities such as advice on whether or not to renew players' expiring contracts, as well as how players develop during their career. There is also a Miscellaneous category and those responsible will give you advice on Tactics, Training and the staff performance.

Scouting

In the Scouting section you can determine who is responsible for making an analysis of your own team or your next opponent, but also who is responsible for scout assignments. He will be the one who decides where your scouts will be traveling to and what kind of players they should be looking for.

Media

Who does the pre- and post-match press conferences? ANd who is responsible for the Team Talks during the match? If you don't feel like this as a manager, you can delegate this to one of your staff members.

Training

Here you determine who is responsible for the training sessions of the first team, the reserves and your highest youth team. There are options to change the responsibilities for both general and individual training of the teams.

Tactics

Decide who will give you tactical advice ahead of a match. This option is also available for the reserve and youth teams. For this responsibility it is useful to look at two attributes: Judging Player Ability and Tactical Knowledge.

Match

This are involves the responsibilities on the teams' matchday. Who holds the team talks? Who is in charge of friendly matches? These responsibilities can also be set for the reserves and youth teams. These will be set by default to the reserve team manager and the youth trainers.

Staff Search

If you are planning to sign new staff members, the Staff Search is the place to do it. This screen works the same as the Player Search screen and allows you to find suitable candidates using specific search criteria.

However, if you have a Technical Director and you have delegated the responsibilities for signing staff to him, this section will not be used that often by you. In that case the Technical Director will look for new staff members and will offer them a contract.

But if you like to sign new staff members yourself, use the New Search button at the top of the screen. A pop-up will open which you can use to search the staff members you need using specific search criteria.

You can use all sorts of filters including Job Preference, Nationality, Age and off course all the needed attributes. Unlike player attributes, staff attributes aren't masked in the game (if you use this setting that is). This makes it easier to find the best staff when searching for them through the Staff Search area. 

Staff Shortlist

The staff shortlist works exactly the same as the shortlist for players. This is where you place staff members you might want to sign in the future. To add a staff member to the shortlist, right-click on the staff member's name and simply select Add to staff shortlist. You then have the choice to add someone to the shortlist for 1, 3 or 6 months, a year or indefinitely.

On the shortlist page for staff members you have the same options as you have on the shortlist for players to specify your search criteria. You can also create multiple shortlists, for example one for each specific role.

We have several downloadable shortlists available for Football Manager in our download area. These cover the best coaches, scouts and other important staff members.

Job Centre

The Job Centre gives you an overview of all open vacancies in your Football Manager save. Here you will only find the vacancies of the clubs that are playable in your database. You can also place an advert on this page to recruit a new staff member.

It is also a useful page for the manager, especially if you are thinking about leaving your current club. Through some filters you can only show the clubs that are looking for a manager. You can then apply directly at that club or even choose to apply at all available clubs.

Job Security

The last page in the staff section is the Job Security page. On this page you will find information about the Job Status of the managers of all playable clubs and countries in your save.

The Job Status is a good indication of whether a club may be looking for a new manager. So if you're looking for a new club, take a look at this page to see which managers are under pressure.

You can show interest in a job and if your reputation is high enough there is a chance that the club will sack its manager and make you an offer. However, your own club may not like it if you openly show interest in taking on another job. This could even lead to you losing your job.

To close

Thank you for reading this piece on Backroom Staff in Football Manager. We hope that this has given you more insights into this important area and use this article as a starting point to find out more on the importance of the staff and the various roles that are available to you as a virtual manager.