Football Manager 2022 New Features: 5 Additions (November 2021)

Sports games have come under a lot of scrutiny lately, and the criticism has been directed mainly at franchises with annual releases. Fans and critics are unhappy with what they perceive as a lack of effort, since many series such as FIFA and NBA 2K tend to make only a small amount of changes every year.

The Football Manager series manages to avoid as much criticism as many other annual sports games. However, this is even more so because the current product offers an excellent single-player experience that most players are happy with, rather than the series making a large number of changes with every iteration.

This is why many people buy Football Manager games only every two or three years and sometimes carry the adventure they started through to 2040 or 2050. With Football Manager 22 launching on Game Pass this year, Sega and Sports Interactive seem to have responded to this.

What Are the 5 New Features Introduced in Football Manager 2022 (FM 22)?

Although Football Manager 22 does not fit the trend of sports games that implement only a few features every year, everything on offer is a worthwhile addition that makes the latest game the best way to play the respected management series.

FM 22 Wide Centre-Back

With three- and five-at-the-back formations becoming increasingly popular these days, Sports Interactive has implemented a new role for defenders. Wide centre-backs play at left and/or right centre-back and shift into a wide full-back role when in possession, and that is how the game instructs them.

This role comes with Defend, Support and Attack duties; use this role very rarely for your central centre-back, or not at all. When the Attack duty is selected, the wide centre-back will provide support like a full-back joining the attack from the wings, so you can enter the box with an extra player and have a chance to be more effective with crosses from the flank.

Sheffield United are one of the few teams that popularized the wide centre-back role. During their time under Chris Wilder in the Premier Legue, the team used the wide centre-back tactic that worked wonders in their first season in the Premier League, surprised many teams and got unexpected results from them.

FM 22 Match Engine Improvements

The match engine of the Football Manager series is one of its most problematic features. The visuals and animations lag significantly behind series like FIFA and eFootball, which may lead many new players to dislike it and not play.

But like many aspects of the Football Manager series, the match engine does not need to look flashy; it needed to be an accurate representation of how the manager's tactics are carried out through team shape, passing style, pressing intensity and more.

As with many annual releases of the series, the match engine received some improvements this time. A new animation engine was implemented to make players look more natural and realistic; this is a nice step in the right direction for the aesthetic appeal of matches.

Football Manager 2022 Data Hub

The Data Hub, which adds more tactical insight and analysis than ever, is one of this year's most interesting new features. The Data Hub contains many useful statistics, figures and graphs about the manager's team and the upcoming opposition. Such data includes pass maps, cross accuracy, team shape, xG performance, formation effectiveness, shot accuracy and much more.

Basically, the Data Hub is the real purpose of the Football Manager series, allowing managers to analyze their team's performance from a tactical perspective and adjust their playing style accordingly.

FM 22 Expanded Deadline Day

Transfer deadline day can be one of the most exciting days on the sports calendar. As the name suggests, it is the day the transfer window (the period in which clubs can buy, sell and loan players) closes and the last time deals can be made until the next window opens months later.

You would expect teams worth millions with incredible budgets to finish all their transfers before the last day, but in every transfer window we see many teams trying to make last-minute transfers, and this year is likely to be no different.

Football Manager 22's expanded deadline day is essentially a transfer version of the Data Hub that takes all the necessary information and puts it into one neat package that is easy to view and understand. This feature may not sound very important on paper, but it serves the purpose of making the game's deadline day more engaging and exciting.

FM22 Revamped Staff Meetings

Meetings and regular communication with staff are a vital part of real-life management and are often overlooked by football management players, who often spend a day hiring the perfect staff for their team and then talk to them only once every three years.

Football Manager 22 aims to increase the manager's desire to talk to staff by improving the meetings feature. This feature schedules regular meetings with the backroom staff, who in turn give advice; the manager then has the option to accept or reject the advice at the press of a button, a situation familiar to those who use Tinder. You just need to choose one of the options, reject or accept.

It seems that with the revamped staff meetings, the new Data Hub and a better-prepared deadline day, Sports Interactive aims to make Football Manager 2022 more concise.

When Will FM 22 Be Released?

The Football Manager 22 beta is now on PC. The full game will be released for PC, Xbox and Mobile on November 9. Work is also continuing on the Nintendo Switch version.