The player can select their team to balance the skills based on the opposing team's ratings (e.g. The team has ratings of defence, midfield and attack (the total skills of all defenders, midfielders or attackers selected), energy (an average of all selected players) and morale (which increases when the team wins and decreases when they lose). The players' skill and energy ratings also change at the end of the season. Players must be rested to renew their energy rating or if they become injured.
Each player has a skill rating and an energy rating. While the team and player names are real, they are not accurately represented so whichever team is selected, the player always starts in the fourth division and their team is randomly populated with players.
The player chooses a team and then must try to earn promotion from the fourth to the first division (although the player can then keep playing for as many seasons as they wish). The game was written entirely in BASIC and, apart from the match highlights on some versions, used only text displays and keyboard entry. While the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and PC versions, kept or improved all features such as the match highlights graphics, all others (including the Acorn Electron, Atari 8-bit, Commodore Plus/4 and MSX) were, like the original, text only. The game was a huge success and was ported to a wide range of systems between 19. It was then ported to the ZX Spectrum with added animated graphics showing match highlights.
It was converted to the Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81 and Toms created the software label Addictive Games to launch the game in 1982. Toms developed the first game on a Video Genie, a clone of the Tandy TRS-80. Football Manager 2 is the first game in the FM series.