Football Manager 2023 is the best in the series yet – just like FM22, FM21 and so on

When you peek around inside, you’ll see for yourself. You’ll see the new squad planner, which makes recruitment easier; there’s a larger breakdown of supporter feelings; if you’re playing in Europe, you’ll be delighted by UEFA branding (right down to the theme tunes), and if you’re getting through the years after slamming your spacebar into dust, you can enjoy a new managerial timeline to look back on your best and worst. The data-hub is back – staff meetings are too – and, of course, there’s the ever-improving match engine, where you can actually defend with a low block, goalkeepers finally act slightly better than stickmen and where opposition managers might throw a few tactical curveballs at you.Read more: Best deals on Football Manager 2023Wasn’t most of this hanging around from FM22, though? Well, yeah. Such is life for the Football Manager series. There’s no upheaval, just some solid additions to the existing formula. Last year’s ‘groundbreaking’ data hub is a little better. The match engine is a little better as well. You don’t need a notepad or a memory to plan your squad. You don’t need to blast the YouTube video of the theme song for the occasion when you’ve brought Blyth Spartans into the Champions League anymore. It’s all baked in now, and FM23 operates as the dream Football Manager sandbox.FM22 did as well, though. It’s all only a ‘little better’ – so if you’re really enjoying your time with last year’s instalment, there’s no rush to upgrade. There’s very little in this package that will make FM23 worth buying, if you’re knee-deep in an FM22 save. Think of this as more of the definitive version of last year’s game. It’s that – but with a little seasoning. You get the planner and the tweaked match engine and a few new bits here and there but, really, it’s not all that different.Read more: Football Manager 2023 comes to Xbox Game PassThe same annoyances still exist. Media interactions are a grind. Inane transfer discussions border on lunacy – you’ll be asked for hundreds of millions, only for the target player to eventually move to a random club for 10 per cent of the fee originally requested. There’s the squad promises, where revolutions will be brewed if you only hire three coaches instead of four. There’s the matches where you pepper the goal, but leave with a 1-0 defeat that creates a morale death spiral.In a way, all of these grumbles slightly reflect real football. Ask Wolves how they felt after laying Leicester to siege only to walk away with nothing. Players demand coaches they like and throw fits if they do not get them. Clubs will always play silly games with transfers and you can’t tell me that managers love press conferences.Read more: FIFA 23 reviewThat’s football and, for that reason, FM23 is worth playing and buying (with caveats). If you love football, you’ll love FM23. If you love simulations and in-depth management games, you’ll love FM23. However, it’s a full-price release for not a whole lot of ‘new’.After putting 300+ hours into every FM instalment since 2006, I cannot deny this is the best Football Manager game ever, but so was FM22, FM21, FM20, FM19 and so on. It’s a behemoth, and that’s because of the people who back it year in, year out.Those people will find what they love in this edition. Football Manager has always been about the narratives created within the sandbox. FM23 makes it easier for fans to plot out long-term saves, thanks to the squad planner, but the real fun isn’t found in features, it is within the turning point. If you love the series, you know what I’m on about. A player will eventually get that save that they cannot stop talking about, the one that takes them deeper, and that will be that – hundreds of hours of gameplay locked in.