Football Manager 2023 is set to release later this year, and one of the best parts of playing the latest iteration of the management sim is doing challenges like the 5000/1!
The game has not been officially announced at the time of writing but the game follows an annual release schedule and we expect it to be announced within the next month.
FM usually releases around November time, as FM22 did last year, and there is no reason for that to change this year.
As a result, we’ve been taking a look at some of the challenges that you might want to take on in FM23.
We’ve already written about using Moneyball in the game, playing a Youth-Only save, and allowing your Director of Football to take control of your recruitment.
But have you heard of the 5,000/1 challenge?
Let’s take a look at how you can take it on and try to replicate the crazy success of Leicester City, when they shocked the world.
How to play the 5,000/1 challenge on Football Manager 2023
LEICESTER, ENGLAND - MAY 07: Jamie Vardy of Leicester City kisses the Premier League Trophy after the Barclays Premier League match between Leicester City and Everton at The King Power Stadium on May 7, 2016 in Leicester, United Kingdom. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
This was first posted on the SI Games forum back in 2021, by a user going by the name of Mark_w.
He is clearly a Leicester fan, as Nigel Pearson is his avatar, and he makes it clear that his own club has a pretty spectacular story.
Now, some prior knowledge is required here.
Leicester were relegated at the end of the 2007/08 season, going down from the Championship to League One. In 2016, they won the Premier League, confounding odds of 5,000/1.
Mark has gone through the rules of the save and we’ve updated them slightly to reflect the fact that you’ll be playing on FM23.
5000/1 Challenge Rules for the FM23 Save
- Holiday to the 9th of May 2023 with your original manager, staying unemployed.
- Create a manager with a Continental B Licence, with experience of being a Professional Footballer at local level. That’s the level needed for a League One manager.
- You must take over the team that finished 22nd in the Championship, as Leicester did back in 2008. Make your unemployed manager retire.
- You now have 8 seasons to go from the third tier to winning the Premier League title.
- Your transfer budget for the entirety of the save is around £95m. You’ve got about £5m leeway here.
- Ten of the players who won the Premier League with Leicester played for the club in the Championship. A similar number must be achieved in your save.
- One player must play for the club in every single season, and you have to give them game time when you win the Premier League. This is a reference to Andy King, who played for Leicester at all three levels and lifted the trophy.
- European success is not important but would, obviously, be very nice!
We’ve also put together some tips on how you can make this really interesting save work.
- Trust your youth. You’ll need one player to play for you for eight seasons, so you’ll want them to be relatively young when you start out. Find the biggest prospect in your club and trust them.
- Utilise loans early on. The odds are you won’t have a huge amount of money to spend, anyway, when you kick off, so try to bring a few players in from the Premier League to give you a boost.
- Only spend early on when you really need to. For example, if your first-choice goalkeeper suffers a serious injury. You’ve got £95m to last eight seasons, which equates to £11.8m per season. Try to avoid spending too much in your first two or three seasons so you’ve got more to play with in the Premier League.
- Free agents will be important early on so keep offering trials out to players who are available and who are interested.
- If you really want to copy Leicester, utilise a vertical counter-attacking system with one up front in the Premier League.
It’s a really interesting challenge and one that is likely to keep you busy for a fair amount of time.
Let us know how you get on if you do give it a go.
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