Xbox 360 - Assessing Your Squad

It is important to make sure that you are fully aware of what your staff members can do for you. Within Football Manager 2007 you can leave a lot of the background goings on to your staff or if you want to have control over everything you can get stuck into the goings on of your youth team or reserve teams for instance.

You can view your staff from the squad screen by pressing the LB or RB button on your control pad, then selecting "Information" and then "staff". From here you will have the complete list of all the current non-playing staff at your club from the chairman down to the scouts. By pressing up or down on the directional pad you can view their contract status as well as their mental and coaching attributes. You'll get a warning from your assistant when contracts are near an end, but keeping an eye on them will keep you one step ahead. Be advised though that personnel above the manager's contracts and attributes cannot be viewed.

- Assess your players

If you have taken over the club you support you should have a rough idea of where your squad needs strengthening. If you have taken over a club which you don't know much or anything about, the best way to assess your players is through the staff you have around you - your staff can help you by providing player reports, team reports, and many, many other things - this is all accessible from the coaches profile page. After setting this up (and possibly some friendly matches as well) you may need to skip your team on by a few weeks to get the relevant information back from your staff. Pull the right trigger button on the squad screen and select 'Assistant advice' and then 'team report' this will take the player to the assistant manager's perspective of your team. It will show the best player, the worst player and the player with the best potential in the 3 main areas of your team: Defender, Midfielder and Attacker. By pressing the X and Y buttons you can also see the assistant's choice for a starting eleven and second eleven respectively.