Tactical Manager

Following success with the mail-order Football Tactician series, Talking Birds entered the mainstream with this retitled version. It’s a football management game, setting you in charge of one of the teams in the top 2 English divisions of the time and giving you control over transfers, tactics and training regimes as you aim to guide your team to success. Initially you can only manage the lower teams, but if you succeed over a few seasons you will become respected enough to have a chance to get the top roles.

The focus is on ultra-realism, which makes it very hard to quickly transform a club’s fortunes, as there is a lack of money at many of the smaller teams and attracting players is harder than in the Premier Manager series and similar. Matches are viewed from top-down highlights, with 3 levels of detail (goals-only, highlights and kick-by-kick) offered.