The Countdown to Kick-Off is on with Confirmed Release Date for Football Manager 2012

Miles Jacobson, Studio Director at Sports Interactive has today posted a Blog on the official forums for the game Football Manager 2012 where he confirms the release date of the latest entry in the long-running football coaching simulator. The game will launch on PC and Mac on 21st October 2011. In the Blog, Miles also goes on to cover some of the new scouting options in the new title, as well as the new in-depth Team Report options. SEGA and Sports Interactive have also revealed that a limited-length demo will be made available, which allows progress made to be transferred to the full game. No date has been given for the demo yet, but will release before launch.

Read below for more details from the latest blog:

There have been significant improvements this year with scouting. Some of this was briefly mentioned when we originally announced Football Manager 12 a few weeks ago, but we can go into more detail now, as well as give you a few new nuggets.

One of the biggest improvements to the whole game this year is the new team report. We’ve very luck at Sports Interactive to have a large number of fans in amongst football, including many scouts who, with permission from their employers, give us the real scouting reports that they put together for teams when watching them for the manager.

And with FM12, we’ve implemented as much of this information as we can!

Not only do you get these reports when scouting the next opposition – you can get a team report from any club in the game world just by asking one of your scouts to scout them.

So what, exactly, do the team reports show you?

Let’s start at the start, and the first screen you’ll see if the “strength overview” screen which shows you the top 3 players at each position at the club, with star ratings for each player.

If you want to go into even more depth than this, just click on the “position strength” options, and you can then see the ratings and rankings for every player and position in the oppositions (or your, if the team report is on your team) squad.

The next option is “team comparison”. This allows you to compare various stats between the two clubs, such as average age, height, weight, caps in the squad, wage bills and how many players are unavailable.

When you are looking at your own team report, the team comparison option will allow you to do a comparison with any team within your own division.

Clicking on the “all positions” tab gives you a comparison of average stats amongst your players, and if you then look at the following tabs to look at goalkeeper, you’ll see a comparison specifically for goalkeeping stats. And with the defenders tab, you see a comparison specifically for defenders. And for midfielders, and attackers.

The “last match” tab gives you information about the clubs last match, with stats such as shots, shots on target, possession etc., and the ratings, goals, and status of each player in that match for both the team you’ve scouted, and their opposition, plus a text match report. And the option to go and watch the match.

Tactic analysis gives you information on how you’ve fared when using specific tactics, with information on how many times you’ve started with those tactics, how many minutes you’ve used them, how many goals you’ve scored & how many you’ve conceded. As well as a breakdown for goals scored and conceded against different rankings of team – higher rated, similar rated and smaller rated. Along with a paragraph of analysis. For each tactic used.

Tactics faced gives you the same information, based on the tactics you’ve played against.

Next up is goal analysis – this shows you at what time in the game you have scored and conceded goals, and where your assists have come from, the types of goals you’ve scored and conceded, and the type of assist for or against you.

It’s quite comprehensive, and isn’t just available for first teams – it’s also available for international teams and your youth and reserve teams.

There are also improvements and new things with player scouting too.

You now have the choice of using a scouting pool to scout players. This would send a scout or member of your coaching staff to go and have a look at a player without you having to designate someone specific.

The scouts are also more intelligent, and will even tell you if they think the scouting mission you’ve sent them on is a waste of time. And if they’re a decent scout and you hire them, they might even bring a ready-made scouting list with them

They’ll give you feedback on a players best tactical role, will directly compare them to others in your squad in their scout reports, give better feedback on player weaknesses, can be assigned to scout all your feeder clubs & ask them to scout for specific attributes.

But don’t think they’re always clever. If you just scout a player once, and they aren’t famous, you’d better keep scouting them every year or so, or else you might just find some of their stats become hidden again.

With the release date looming, more Blog updates have been promised to be coming soon at regular intervals, so keep checking back at the official Football Manager forums for more news and updates about the game.

Football Manager 2012 is due to be released on October 21st on PC and Mac.