Main-site.

The main-site at FM-Britain is something of a two for the price of one affair as, since around September of last year, there has been an alternative main-site under the heading of LLM-Britain.  This second site, unsurprisingly enough, deals with some of the issues affecting Lower League Managers. Both sites share a similar, pale, pastel blue design, though it’s worth noting that the LLM-Britain site was riddled with ‘Undefined variable’ errors the last few times I checked. When all’s said and done the site may not be the most attractive in the community but its by no means one of the worst (I always disliked Throw-In’s main-site design the most, thankfully it’s being replaced) and navigation is fairly straight forward.

While the site’s claim to be “The Home of Football Manager Tactics!” may seem a brave one at first glance, a good look around suggests that there is in fact some substance to the claim, largely due to the number, and quality, of tactical articles on display. Largely written by wwfan, with the occasional input by Asmodeus and Sir Bobby Moore II, these articles combine to form a veritable tactical bible, from which you should be able to pull enough information to turn even the most useless bunch of losers into a respectable mid-table outfit.

The LLM-Britain site obviously avoids looking at areas such as tactics and player reviews, instead concentrating on a loose form of club guides. How much relevance these have to your FM game is debatable, but at the same time you can’t help but admire the work that the author/creator put into them.

Forums.

The forums maintain the main-site’s blue colour scheme and have three skins (though two appear to be identical in every aspect but name) which allow you to alter the width of the forums – not ground breaking perhaps, but handy for those of us who find that many of the communities forums are too narrow (or maybe that’s just me).

Tactical discussion is the main appeal of FM-Britain’s forums and the number of theories and ideas posted there is probably second only to Sports Interactive’s own forums. It doesn’t end with theories though as there are numerous threads testing tactics and offering insight into problems with the tactical and training aspects of the Football Manager series.

The LLM portion of the forum has proved to a successful venture too, especially as it has largely managed to avoid much of the condescending criticism and general flaming associated with the LLM community in general (despite sharing many of its members). It’s certainly no exaggeration to suggest that this is amongst the most successful LLM forums outside of the SI Games’ boards. Hopefully that will remain the case.

Unfortunately outside of these two areas there’s little to recommend about FM-Britain’s forums, not because they are particularly poor but because they suffer from a chronic lack of activity. In terms of general Football Manager discussion there’s very little occurring and it’s a similar situation in the FM Graphics area where discussion tends to be limited to the occasional face-pack request. Likewise the Other Stuff section (which houses the Talk Sport and General Talk forums) is largely dead.

Ultimately it’s a shame as the site is clearly trying hard to offer the things that FM gamers want (tactical help and guidance, alternative methods of play and downloads all in one place) but the fact that the site and its forums lack activity is always going to hold it back. Looking a little deeper (i.e. browsing the member list) it’s clear that with roughly 3,000 members the site doesn’t lack potential users. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that the root of the problem actually lies in the fact that the majority of those registered tend to use sortitoutsi.net or Throw-In as their first choice site, only venturing to FM-Britain when either of these is out of commission.