In Football Manager games, does the computer know which the player runs?

Question

In Football Manager games, a human player manages a Football team against similarly managed teams by the computer.

I would like to know if the "central computer" for game results calculation is aware of which team is managed by the human player, and which team is managed by computer players. Does it give an edge to the player for the game be more fun? I have seen some reports of players winning big competitions starting with a lower league team.

Or maybe the computer players take poor decisions from time to time so a good human player can lift himself above all?

Is the central computer totally neutral in computing the game results?

Answer 1

Despite what several hundred people claim on the FM forums, the game gives no preference to human or AI managers.

At the core, Football Manager is a giant spreadsheet and has thousands of permutations calculated using it. Now, this could be something simple as an attacking player with skill of the ball at their feet against a defender with a tackling attribute but in truth, the game would also factor in things like work rate, energy levels, motivation and morale as well as many others.

Not forgetting of course, the hidden attributes that can only be viewed with the editor. These include ambition, consistency, controversy, important matches, injury proneness as well as others.

The managers input is also important in choosing a formation which could be used to man mark a specific player or go all out attack. This is where the AI will have an advantage because it will change things around and it does learn and adapt. If a human manager always plays their games in a 4-4-2 formation and always uses the wings to attack, the AI will change their tactics to counteract this. You'll also get an in game email where the "fans" start asking about always using the same formation when it isn't working.

Finally, there's the random factor which will also affect things and why, you could play the same match 10 times with the same players against the same opponents and get 10 different results.