The Football Manager Data Report 2026

footballgpt.co/fm/data-report

46%of everything asked inside FootballGPT is about Football Manager.

24,099 Football Manager questions against 24,759 real-world coaching questions, all time. From March to August 2026 the game overtook the pitch. This is what 22,787 of those questions were about.

22,787

FM questions in the window

11.4%

asked in a language other than English

4-2-3-1

the shape named most

Aggregate only. No player, save, club or account is identifiable. Questions are counted, never quoted.

Download the report as a PDFHow it was built

Finding 01 · The game overtook the pitch

n = 42,555 mode-tagged questions · March to August 2026

4.8xFM questions grew 4.8 times over in six months, passed coaching questions in May and stayed ahead.

0k3.1k6.2kMarAprMayJunJulAug
Football ManagerReal-world coaching

1,302 FM questions in March to 6,245 in August. Counts are questions sent in each mode, not people. Coaching questions grew too.

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Finding 02 · What FM players actually ask

n = 22,787 FM questions · fm-taxonomy-v1

33.3%of FM questions are about tactics, roles and formations. Transfers are a distant second. Man-management barely registers.

  1. Tactics, roles and formations33.3%
  2. Transfers and scouting8.9%
  3. Match problems and analysis4.5%
  4. Training and player development4.3%
  5. Save and career setup3.3%
  6. Set pieces1.9%
  7. Pasted player or squad data1.7%
  8. Squad, contracts and finances1.2%
  9. Media, morale and man-management0.5%

Each question is assigned to the first matching theme by a rule-based classifier (fm-taxonomy-v1). 32.4% everything else and 8% asked in another language, not classified. Shares are of all FM questions in the window, so the bars do not add to 100.

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Finding 03 · The formations they build

n = 1,624 questions naming a shape · March to August 2026

4-2-3-1is the shape FM players ask about most. 4-3-3 is second and nothing else comes close.

4-2-3-139.1%
4-3-327.8%
4-4-214.6%
4-1-4-19.7%
3-4-34.6%
4-2-43.6%
3-4-2-13.3%

7.1% of FM questions name a shape that adds up to ten outfield players. Shares are of those questions. Shapes named fewer than 50 times are not shown. A question naming two shapes counts once for each.

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Finding 04 · The styles they chase

n = 2,961 questions naming a style · March to August 2026

Possessionfootball is what FM players ask for most. The low block is right behind it.

  1. Possession and tiki-taka39.2%
  2. Low block and defensive33%
  3. Counter attack23.2%
  4. Wing play23%
  5. Gegenpress16.2%
  6. Direct and long ball9.5%
  7. Vertical tiki-taka4.4%

13% of FM questions name a recognisable style. Shares are of those questions and a question can name more than one style. Styles named fewer than 50 times are not shown.

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Finding 05 · The clubs they manage

n = 1,857 questions naming one of 65 clubs · March to August 2026

Manchester Unitedis the club FM players name most when they ask for help. Arsenal and Chelsea follow.

  1. 01Manchester United
  2. 02Arsenal
  3. 03Chelsea
  4. 04Barcelona
  5. 05Liverpool
  6. 06Tottenham
  7. 07Manchester City
  8. 08Real Madrid
  9. 09PSG
  10. 10Bayern Munich

Ranked by how often each club is named, bars relative to the top club. Only 8.1% of FM questions name a club at all, and the check covers 65 well-known clubs, so this is the shape of a thin sample, not a league table. Club names are shown as text; no crest or badge is used.

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Finding 06 · When they play

n = 22,787 FM and 19,768 coaching questions · March to August 2026

Sundayis the busiest day for Football Manager. Coaches peak on Monday and go quiet on Saturday.

0%8%17%SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
Football ManagerReal-world coaching

Share of each lane's questions by day of the week, UTC. FM: Sunday 15.8%. Coaching: Monday 16.6%, Saturday 10.2%. By time of day FM leans to the afternoon and evening (32.2% and 31.1%), coaching spreads more evenly. These are timestamps of questions, not of matches played.

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Finding 07 · Which game, and in what language

n = 22,787 FM questions · March to August 2026

6.7:1FM26 to FM24, among questions that name a version. And 11.4% of all FM questions are not asked in English.

  1. French3.4%
  2. German2.3%
  3. Spanish2.2%
  4. Italian1.2%
  5. Portuguese1.2%
  6. Turkish0.6%
  7. Indonesian0.3%

10.1% of FM questions name FM26 and 1.5% name FM24; the rest name no version. Language is detected by function words, so it is coarse, and only languages above the 50 floor are named. Shares are of all FM questions.

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For FM players · code FM50

FM Mode for $2.49 in your first month.

Ask it about your own save, your tactic and your squad. It is the same FM Mode that answered the 22,787 questions above. Normally $4.99 a month. New customers only, with code FM50 at checkout. Free to try without a card.

See FM Mode pricingOpen the FM26 hub

How this report was built

Questions are counted, never quoted, and the rules are published.

Source. Questions sent to FootballGPT in Football Manager mode between 1 March and 31 August 2026, compared with real-world coaching mode over the same window. The all-time split on the cover is every mode-tagged question since records began. Computed on 6 September 2026.

Method. A rule-based classifier (fm-taxonomy-v1) assigns each question to its first matching theme. Formations are strings that add up to ten outfield players. Styles, clubs, game versions and languages are matched by published word lists. The rules live in the FootballGPT codebase and are versioned; a rule change means a recompute, never a hand edit.

Floors. No ranked row is shown below 50 questions. Accounts that opted out of the data portal are excluded upstream. No question text, save, club setup or account appears anywhere in this report.

What it does not prove. This is what people asked, not what they were told and not what happened in their save. It says nothing about the quality of FootballGPT's answers. It is not a survey of Football Manager players in general: it describes the people who brought their save to this product.

The coaching side of the same dataset is at footballgpt.co/data, with the full methodology.