The GTS Way | Part 1 of The Culture Club

First, an apology. I’ve started and stopped a couple of FM22 saves this year – after exciting beginnings I lost the love for the stories and was no longer inspired to document my progress. But this one… Oh, this one I’m all in on.

Welcome to the story of GTS Culture, a Create-a-Club team starting in the 11th tier of English football. And for this save I’m going to be playing FM in a very different way…

What is The Culture Club?

I’ve been wondering for a while just how well Football Manager simulates the real complexities and complications of a team. I’m talking about the kind of challenges we all encounter in any job – different characters not getting on with each other, one bad egg disrupting a close-knit group of colleagues, or an antagonistic boss coming in and undoing all the great work of the previous one.

Like every FM player, I love the transfers and tactics side of the game – I wouldn’t be able to play it if I didn’t! But for this story I want to put that part to one side and concentrate on the ethos, the culture, and the soul of the club that I’ve created. I’m absolutely striving to get to the Premier League but I want to do it the right way.

So I’ll be trying to create one fantastically close group of squad mates rather than disparate cliques in the dressing room. Expect me to focus on the mental attributes of the players above their physical or technical ability. And I’m going to be the best boss that I can possibly be – less shouting, more understanding.

The ultimate rule

For this experiment to work, I’m setting myself one simple rule to follow.

Do not make the best choice for your Football Manager game. Make the best choice for the team of people you are managing.

Mister Culture, March 2022

We all know there are certain exploits within the game, particularly the type of team talks or responses to conversations that tend to create the best outcome. For the purposes of this save, I’m forgetting all about them. The team in front of me are real people, I’m a decent human being, and I’m going to treat them as such.

Meet the team

With the team created, our stadium named, and our entry into the Southern Combination League Division Two confirmed, I allowed myself to search for five players whose mental attributes would provide a strong spine for the rest of the squad.

In order of priority, the qualities I was looking for were:

• Determination
• Teamwork
• Work Rate
• Concentration
• Bravery
• Decisions

So here are the First Five who founded this club with me:

As you can see from their attributes, this is a group who should stand up to all the challenges that Tier 11 can throw at them, and keep on fighting until the very end.

Squad building

From there, I utilised the tried and tested non-league recruitment tactic of bringing in as many trialists as I possibly could.

Well over a hundred came and went as I filtered out those lacking determination, focus or effort. But eventually, I found a squad that was ready to start our first competitive match as a football club.

How long this team will stay with us, I don’t know. We are an amateur outfit as our journey begins, so I fully expect anyone half-decent to get snapped up by a club that can pay an appearance fee or goal bonus. But for now we have a team that can challenge. So much so that as the season started we had ten players in the media dream eleven!

Kick off time

Of course, with so many new players our team cohesion was dreadful. But with so much quality in the squad, we headed into our first match with high expectations.

Did we fulfil them? Watch the accompanying video to find out. I’ll even introduce you to the whole team while we’re at it…

Up next

Thanks so much for reading. In our next post we’ll explore how The Culture Club get on in the first few matches of the season, but check out our YouTube channel if you want to watch on ahead.

And finally, I want to say a huge thanks to the awesome DanFMDatabases for this incredible lower league database. I literally couldn’t be playing this save without your great work!

Check back again soon for the next part of the GTS Culture story.