Football Manager 26 Advanced Access Beta is nowhere near as bad as you think

I've seen the viral videos. I've seen the bugs and glitches shared online. I've seen the discourse about people refunding the game.

But going purely from my experience so far with Football Manager 26 through the Advanced Access Beta, I'm going to stick my head above the parapet here and say I have not experienced anything like what I've seen on social media.

In fact, playing the game on my MacBook Pro 14-inch M3, I haven't encountered too many issues at all. It's not perfect and I have encountered the odd bug here and there but I'm really enjoying it.

Now, something we can all agree the new match engine and updated graphics are an absolute triumph. Football Manager has never looked better in this regard and it's as thrilling as it ever has been seeing your tactics translate into results on the pitch (most of the time).

The new match engine in Football Manager 26 is fantastic / Sports Interactive

My experience so far has not been flawless. For example, I have encountered instances of the UI only showing me two or three players where I then have to scroll through a small window with the majority of the screen below that free of any information.

And yes, it's a shame things such as the heat map have been removed and it's a bit trickier to see what else is going on outside of the club you manage and league you're in.

But for me, these things are fairly minor. They have been nowhere near enough to significantly detract from my experience with the game so far and fulfilling that football manager dream.

Especially when in terms of the game itself, tinkering with tactics and roles is as in-depth as it ever has been with the introduction of in possession and out of possession formations, roles and approaches being an example of this.

WHY NOT READ: Football Manager 26 studio turned down FIFA World Cup mode at first for this reason

Specifically around the UI, I've no doubt Sports Interactive is aware of the issues too and will fix them. I mean, at the time of writing, we're in the middle of three updates being rolled out in consecutive days (with the latest seeming to fix a number of bugs and speeding up the UI quite dramatically). And this is the Advanced Access Beta.

Twin any sort of change with that change resulting in teething issues and there's always going to be a degree of dissatisfaction towards something. Especially when in this case, Football Manager has stayed so similar for so long.

So I understand that some people might feel a certain way about Football Manager 26 - but so far from my experience, there's nothing that can't be fixed and the game is still really fun and offers a great Football Manager experience at its core.

The new UI has been a huge point of contention - but I've no doubt issues will be ironed out / Sports Interactive

Sports Interactive openly said it takes time to learn and get to grips with the new UI for longtime fans. It took me aback a bit in the beginning as I felt like I had to relearn what I knew from scratch.

But stick with it. Once you get to grips with the changes, it's worth it and delivers that Football Manager feeling. Especially when you start building that unstoppable team of wonderkids.

And if you have encountered and jank or bugs, be sure to report them as Sports Interactive is promising to continually update and refine the game post launch, as proven through upcoming content updates such as the FIFA World Cup license coming at some point next year.

Elsewhere from indy100:

• Football Manager 26 updates have fans saying 'they might cook'
• Uh-oh... Football Manager 26 beta first impressions have fans saying the same thing

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.