Introduction

I'm an LLM Manager. LLM is Lower League Management. It's a style of playing the Football Manager series of games, though, really, you should be able to do it in any football management simulation. A lot of people will pick their favorite team. The "Big Four" from the English Premier league are extremely popular choices, as are Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, etc, etc, etc. I could spend the next half hour listing teams.

My favorite team is Arsenal. However, when I first started playing Championship Manager 03/04, I felt like I shouldn't manage a team like Arsenal right away as I didn't have the skill to do so well. Surely, Arsenal would never hire a no one like me. So I went to League 2 and played as Southend United. I had a good run. I found a really nice Jamaican GK, found an incredible youth player who became a midfield fixture, I challenged for a promotion to League 1 but didn't quite make it. I had the spirit of LLM, but didn't quite adhere to the rules, mainly because I'd never heard of LLM at that point in time.

Here's what LLM is: You go to the lowest league that exists in a given country. (It could be Blue Square South in England, Serie C in Italy, etc. Something like MLS also counts since the United States only has one league in the entire game, though it's not a popular choice since MLS is actually top tier in the US, it only counts as LLM due to a technicality.) You then play as realistically as possible. By this, I mean you don't look at player stats (as much as can be avoided, on some screens they're going to be right in your face but you certainly wouldn't study them), you certainly don't use player comparison, you rely on your scouts for EVERYTHING. Player Search is generally not used, but there are people out there (I'm one of them) who will advocate it in very specific circumstances. Basically, before you do anything, take a second and think, "Can this be done in real life?"

Head over to SI forums for more on LLM.

Anyway, I've been doing LLM almost exclusively for the entire time I've played CM/FM. In FM 2008 I played one season as Arsenal and actually found it boring. They're already in the Top 5 for the world, do I really want to put time and effort into making them just slightly better so they can move to the number 1 spot? I know some people really love making sure their favorite top tier team wins every competition available to them every year, but that's not my style. If I'm going to manage Arsenal, it's going to be because I've proven myself to be the best manager in the world by taking a team from Blue Square to the Premiership. Maybe, probably not, but that's my goal.

Right now, I'm in the middle of an FM2010 save with Blue Square South (BSS) team Bromley. I'm in my 4th season and, after making the playoffs two years in a row and losing in the semi finals, we're predicted to promote to Blue Square Premier (BSP) this season. I've never successfully promoted a team in any way, shape or form, so doing that will be a giant achievement for me. Should I promote from Conference Football to League Football at some point int he future, it'd be like a dream to me.

FM2011 comes out next week, but I intend to not play it until I'm satisfied with my Bromley save and that I've taken it as far as I want. I have, however, preordered it. I will have it the day it's available, but it's unlikely to be played. It's funny that the exact same thing happened with FM2009. I was too into my FM2009 LLM save to play FM2010 until it had been out for 3 or 4 months.

That's it for now, season recaps will be in their own posts!