First up lets just show you the new logo, its nothing extravegant and fairly straight forward, simple does it though i guess:

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/FM_logo_Final.jpg

Moving on, lets have a look at the game itself. When you make your team there is an array of options which you can decide, one of them being the team's colours, and kits:

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/preferences---colours.jpg

I don't know about you but for some reason that seems very EA'ish to me... nonetheless it is an mmo game so I assume that that has to be done. Moving on now to the other preferences; such as, how you want your pitch to look like and how large it should be.

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/preferences---pitch.jpg

 Yet again, another cosmetic feature to the game. Furthermore, if you ever want to know what is going on with your team when you're away from the computer you can have SMS's sent to you alerting you to the game. However, I'm not sure if this service is strictly for the UK, something which the people at SIGames will have to clear up in the near future:

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/preferences---sms.jpg

As can be seen, if you don't want to have sms alerts but still want to be alerted you can do this via email alerts, or if you really want, both. As for news items, it works pretty much the same way as in the past Football Manager series ones, nothing revolutionary in this sense.

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/news-item.jpg

The obvious change is the skin and the new layout that comes with it. One should however mention that Football Manager Live IS a seperate game to Football Manager xx. What about playing the matches? How will that look like? Yet again, somewhat similar to Football Manager series and this is since it uses the same 2d engine.

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/match.jpg

One thing which struck out to me was the fact that you can see the other people's badges, which i for one think is pretty neat. Furthermore, you can chat during the game which will bring players close to one another. Some people may hate that idea and others may like it, but I'm sure there will be an ignore person x's chat or disabled chat function somewhere! If not... then chop chop SI. Something that is different to the FM series is the match updates, they've worked on that part quite a bit.

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/match-updates.jpg

As one can see it is now more detailed in comparison to the FM series. Moving on now, how do you know who is the best player on the server? Well for one there is the rankings table:

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/rankings.jpg

 {mospagebreak}

Here you can see an array of details ranging from their kit, their online status, total wage, average wage, points, form etc. A very concise yet informative table. However, i wonder if there will be an overall rankings, i.e. Who is the best ranked from all the servers? Or if the ranking is only server-restricted. How do you get higher up in the rankings? Well you organize/join competitions or leagues, below is an example of one of those leagues:

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/fml-league.jpg

Looking form that i can only assume that one sets the rules of the league when he creates it, so perhaps you can have varrying amount of points or amount of times you play one another? Who knows... the questions! The questions! This game comes out next year so there's still some time for SI to answer.. Now that aside, what about profiles? How will my manager profile look nowl!?

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/profile.jpg

Taaa-dah! Here you can see the team the kits of the team he manages, who is actually on his team, the most recent fixtures and results, the server he is on, his ranking etc. Most importantly it looks like you can add your own profile picture. If there are only a set stock amount of pictures you can choose from, fair enough. However, if you can upload a picture i emplore SIGames to validate it first as there are bound to be some instances of dodgy pictures cropping up. Nonetheless, despite this not being FM there is still a transfer market, and perhaps one with more realism as its not AI-based...

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/player---loan-request.jpg

The above is just an example of the message that crops up when you get loan offers... One thing which surprises me here is the inability to negoiate the transfer, maybe it just isn't a feature? Who knows! The next picture being an example  of what happens if one of your loan offers gets rejected:

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/loan-rejection.jpg

As with FM you can add a little note as to why you accepted/rejected the offer... A cool new feature which you can see within the news area is the possibility to forward, an interesting feature i must admit. Just not sure as to how useful it actually is....  Now lets look at the other aspects, one being chat:

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/chat.jpg

Now with all chat rooms comes problems, sadly there is no age restriction on the internet and even then there will always be that one black sheep. I assume that SIGames will institute some type of word filter. There are a lot of issues that SIGames have yet to answer and I'm not quite sure if they understand the severity, then again they have one year. You have to be really dimm not to figure out these issues within the next year... As to the chat, it's timestamped and is very similar to MSN Messenger, so thats nice. I also wonder if you will be able to privately chat with one user only? I know you could probably use personal messages but that would be chat via the news section, what I'm wondering is if you can have private chats via the chat section... another area of interest. Last but not least... finances! 

http://cmfrenzy.com/mikedadude/FML/finances.jpg

Probably one of the most important aspects of the game, everything there is pretty self-explanatory. I like the fact that you get constant finance updates though, its a nice little touch. After all it is the small things that make a game great.

Alright ladies (if there are any) and gents, I hope you enjoyed that inside look into Football Manager Live. Sadly i did the best i could with the only screenshots out there, the ones given to us by SIGames, but hopefully we will get more exciting ones down the line!

Be sure to discuss this at our forums at: http://www.cmfrenzy.com/forum/