Confused by the new Technical Director role in Football Manager? Learn how to leverage it to build your dream staff, save time, and dominate the game.
The Secret Weapon: Why Every FM Player Needs a Technical Director
For any regular Football Manager player, the introduction of new staff members in each edition of the simulator can be tough to keep up with. Football Manager 2020 introduced a whole new role to the game, and in truth, many don’t know who or what they do. This guide will explain the role of the technical director, how they can make your life easier in Football Manager, and what you should be looking for when appointing a technical director.
The Technical Director in Football Manager
So, your Technical Director might seem like just another wage to pay, but they are a crucial part of your club in FM. If you want to run a fully functioning outfit with plenty of advice being given by staff you can trust, you need to get a good and reliable TD.
Your technical director is in charge of ensuring your club is adequately staffed. Like how a director of football monitors player recruitment – to vary degrees, depending on your responsibilities and how much you delegate – the technical director considers the staffing needs of your club. This can include coaching staff, analytics, recruitment, medical staff and staff for your youth teams as well. At bigger clubs, this can also include your B teams and reserve teams. As some bigger clubs will have over 100 non-playing staff, this is no small job and requires expert handling.
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For anyone who is building a new coaching staff, having a Technical Director with a similar vision to you is vital. Make sure they have a similar viewpoint on the game in terms of their coaching style, and you can find that you can get along with each other very well indeed. This is just the same as you would do for coaching staff and your head of youth development: if you have a particular style of play in mind, you generally want your head of youth development to have a similar outlook on football so as to bring through youngsters with the right abilities. Similarly, you’ll ideally want a technical director who also matches your vision of playing style. That way, they’ll appoint coaches and recruitment staff who also share your philosophy, ensuring that your ideas are prevalent throughout the entire club.
There are two main attributes you should be looking at when appointing a technical director: negotiating and judging staff ability. These seem fairly self-explanatory, but there’s plenty that can go wrong when you don’t pay attention to these attributes. If you hire a technical director with poor negotiating, you could end up with staff on massively inflated contracts because they’ve gotten the better of your technical director when negotiating a contract. Alternatively, you might miss out on staff targets because your technical director can’t close the deal and the staff member has gone to a different club.
Judging staff ability is also about more than their attributes. Of course, you want the best available coaches, with the skills to nurture your budding talents. However, anyone can set up a filter on the staff search tab and find the staff with the right attributes. As we all know, recruitment is about more than that, and your technical director will consider the staff member’s tactical preferences and their hidden attributes to assess their fit with your club. A technical director with high judging staff ability acts like a scout for your staff, and they’ll have a far greater insight into staff abilities than you.
Basically, you’ll grow to see him as the boss of your coaching, scouting, and medical departments. While your Head of Youth Development is a senior part of the youth development scene, and your Director of Football & Head Scout play a major role in the recruitment department, your Technical Director tells you how good they are doing their own jobs. So, without one, you don’t have a great idea about staff development, progression, or understanding overall.
So, what should I be looking for?
For anyone who is building a new coaching staff, having a Technical Director with a similar vision to you is vital. Make sure they have a similar viewpoint on the game in terms of their coaching style, and you can find that you can get along with each other very well indeed. This is just the same as you would do for coaching staff and your head of youth development: if you have a particular style of play in mind, you generally want your head of youth development to have a similar outlook on football so as to bring through youngsters with the right abilities. Similarly, you’ll ideally want a technical director who also matches your vision of playing style. That way, they’ll appoint coaches and recruitment staff who also share your philosophy, ensuring that your ideas are prevalent throughout the entire club.
There are two main attributes you should be looking at when appointing a technical director: negotiating and judging staff ability. These seem fairly self-explanatory, but there’s plenty that can go wrong when you don’t pay attention to these attributes. If you hire a technical director with poor negotiating, you could end up with staff on massively inflated contracts because they’ve gotten the better of your technical director when negotiating a contract. Alternatively, you might miss out on staff targets because your technical director can’t close the deal and the staff member has gone to a different club.
Judging staff ability is also about more than their attributes. Of course, you want the best available coaches, with the skills to nurture your budding talents. However, anyone can set up a filter on the staff search tab and find the staff with the right attributes. As we all know, recruitment is about more than that, and your technical director will consider the staff member’s tactical preferences and their hidden attributes to assess their fit with your club. A technical director with high judging staff ability acts like a scout for your staff, and they’ll have a far greater insight into staff abilities than you.
Basically, you’ll grow to see him as the boss of your coaching, scouting, and medical departments. While your Head of Youth Development is a senior part of the youth development scene, and your Director of Football & Head Scout play a major role in the recruitment department, your Technical Director tells you how good they are doing their own jobs. So, without one, you don’t have a great idea about staff development, progression, or understanding overall.
Bring your staff along on a journey
Not only does your technical director recruit staff, but they’ll take responsibility for their development. If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to send your staff on coaching courses at any opportunity. However, it’s tiresome sorting these on an individual basis, and I get sick of seeing coaching courses recommended to me in staff meetings. The technical director can take control of this and makes sure your staff are developing while not taking up your precious time having to arrange courses yourself.
Think of your Technical Director, then, as the Director of Football for your staff. They can seek out and hire new staff for your youth teams and your senior team. If you don’t want to hunt down a new DoF, scout, physio, or even coaching team, then get your Technical Director on the job hunt for you. They’ll often do a good job of finding coaches for every sector of the club and improving it. So, the Technical Director is very much a member of your backroom team who is worth the wage they earn. The time they can save you in accurately finding staff is an essential part of Football Manager, and I recommend you use it to your advantage.
