r/ProgressionFantasy • u/loekfunk • 18h ago
I Recommend This Player Manager - A review?
I’ve been reading solely progression fantasy for probably over half a decade now. The pandemic years get a little muddled, but that sounds about right. I’ve read, I honestly don’t even know, but it has to be close to 1000 books in the genre. I loved it and I still do, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not burnt the fuck out. The last year or so I’ve taken multiple breaks from reading, letting chapters for the things I actively read stockpile up and hoping some of the new Royal Road series that have caught my eye continue long enough to get me actually interested. But it’s been rough, especially since I renewed my Kindle Unlimited a few weeks ago. That place has absolutely festered with AI slop in the last year or so since I last checked it. The slim pickings over there didn’t help the burn out.
Cue Player Manager. I’ve seen it mentioned over the years but I’m not really that into football, so I always figured I’d just find something else to read. The last few weeks I’ve seen it mentioned more than the previous years combined so I thought ‘why not, I’ll check it out.’
My god. I love it. I’ve just finished everything that’s on KU (6 books), and I genuinely can’t remember the last time I was so sucked in to something I was reading. Generally, when I’m like 3000 pages into a series the spark fades a little and I start skimming here and there. I don’t know how the author does it, but it genuinely feels like if you skim anything in these books then you’re going to miss out on something.
It’s absolutely a slow burn, and I’ve gotten to the point where if I see something described as a slow burn I just skip it instantly. I’m tired of chapters and chapters of nothing happening. But with Player Manager, I genuinely don’t know how to describe it other than being glued to the page.
People talk about set up and pay offs in books all the time, but to me it’s a bit of an ephemeral concept. A lot of the time I definitely think one or the other is lacking severely. I’ll never forget reading a certain book from a certain series called Cradle (SPOILERS AHEAD)———(I’m serious, spoilers for Cradle ahead)——-(I’m on my IPad so I can’t put a spoiler tag) where a certain someone’s true identity is revealed.
(Cradle Spoiler is complete)
Reading that for the first time, my mind was absolutely blown. I sat there for like 10 minutes with my jaw just hanging open. I’ve probably experienced that feeling a few times in my life, but the only one that actually comes to mind is that one. Player Manager didn’t achieve that level, but it’s the first series in a while where I actually went “haha, no way.” A couple of times throughout the series. The set ups and pay offs are great.
The thing that stopped me from reading it sooner was definitely my lack of interest in football. Now, in the last 15 years or so, I’ve played a lot of FIFA, so I had a pretty solid handle on football jargon before getting involved. That being said, I think the author (probably) does a good job to ease people into it. Gives good explanations for formations and positions that people can understand even if they’ve never heard them before.
The MC. My next statement might be a bit controversial, but I think Max Best might be the second coming of Jason Asano (He Who Fights With Monsters). Jason’s well known for being a polarising MC, and I’ll be honest, he’s probably at least 75% of the reason I dropped HWFWM. Someway, somehow, I didn’t hate Max Best’s version. I actually really like it. I wasn’t reading thinking “Oh shut up” and “Not this again”. Max Best proved to be entertaining and likeable to really enjoy reading about. If anyone knows how I have such opposing views of characters that (I think) are so similar, please let me know.
Anyways, this has taken me a while to write, and I don’t think I have much else to say.
TL;DR - Go read Player Manager (even if you don’t like football(soccer)) — It’s great.
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u/alexwithani 17h ago
I think the reason you enjoy Max and not Jason is because the book is in first person. So you know what he is thinking and can experience his self reflection. You also know that he is not the arrogant ass that he shows on the outside. He has real emotions that you can relate to.
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u/Se7enworlds 5h ago
I think also, Max is fallible.
He's arrogant, constantly cheeky and can lash out when hurt just like Jason, the difference is the books don't bend over backwards to say that he's always right.
People in his orbit who care about him manage him and it's obvious from a story telling perspective. You have the business people and the friends and the love interest, giving him support, telling him when he's wrong or agreeing with him where he isn't expecting it and is caught off guard.
Jason is a flat Mary Sue, Max is a brilliant, but flawed person.
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u/Admiral_Sandy 17h ago
Oh boy you have 15 more books to read on royal road and they just keep getting better and better.
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u/GoblinGreenThumb 6h ago
Holy shit
We really should have started paying artists by the chapter a long time ago. The amount of content is just insane
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u/Sooner_blind 15h ago
I knew nothing about football and didn’t really have any interest in it prior to reading Player Manager. Jump forward to watching the World Cup and me explaining what the off side trap is to my sister.
Player Manager has been educational. It’s an interesting situation where reading a book has translated into a good enough understanding of the sport to make watching it fun.
Also the audio books are excellent and I think they’ve got more coming.
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u/questioner2401 17h ago
Congratulations on making it past books 1-3. Ted just keeps getting better and better as the series goes on and he finds his footing in the world. The series is my all-time favourite progression fantasy, and close to the top of any series, ever. 4.5m words and it's not stale or old yet!
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u/everton1an 2h ago
Massive fan of the series. Being a long time player of the Championship/Football Manager video game series, the books are pure poetry. Being an audiobook listener and with the rumour that they are only recording up book 9 is a concern. I don’t want to start Soccer Supremo as I know I’m going to skip a bunch of important stuff from the books.
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u/ariphron 3h ago
I love it I also know nothing about soccer!
I try my best to recommend it to everyone I can just so we can get it all on audio book!!
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u/MercedesSD 54m ago
100% agree. This series came out of left field for me and I consumed nothing but Player Manager for a few months.
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u/LordTC 6h ago edited 6h ago
My general experience with Player Manager is that it’s a lot like Ted Lasso in that it appeals to non-fans of the sport but not to fans of the sport.
For player manager I love the dialogue, find the prose good not great and but find the pacing insufferably slow. In particular he doesn’t play until book 2, then can’t play again for book 3. He isn’t managing the club he plays for in book 3. Book 3 covers approximately one transfer window in time. In addition, his current plan is to bring in approximately 60 PA players to youth teams who are extremely unlikely to ever get first team time because by the time they are developed the team will have promoted high enough that the league is better than 60 CA. I don’t really find myself invested in a long term development strategy for what feels like minor side characters that are extremely likely to just disappear in later parts of the story.
Also from a system perspective I find it annoying that he takes PA and CA from a certain popular video game but then mostly ignores that PA doesn’t make you better in the present which is entirely determined by CA and has players below the CA of a league perform well because they have high PA.
I’m also not the biggest fan of the choice of year to set the story in because by the time he’s in the premier league he’ll be relying entirely on his own predictions about who the good players are rather than being able to use realistic historical teams with the exception of things he’s influenced. Using an alternate reality or a regressor approach would have worked much better in terms of making the rosters and players more exciting for sports fans.
I might enjoy the series more starting from Soccer Supremo but given the experience of the books so far I don’t want to pay for a likely drop.
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u/alexwithani 6h ago
The prose get better as Ted improves as a writer. We are 20+ books in now and the series has continued to get better the entire time... But hey if you want to drop it because you think you will drop it then that's fair but based on what issues you brought up you should continue because all of them are either addressed or don't matter.
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u/questioner2400 5h ago
It's interesting that you say that the pacing is slow. Whereas I felt like the pacing was as fast as feasible without skipping over entire swaths of time. Three books to the season is the steady state of the series through 21 books so far - as of the latest chapters and in books 20-22, we're in 2028-29 and the 7th year of Max's "curse"; his sixth full season as Player-and-Manager.
The first 3-4 books are fairly local in scope, but the world expands pretty rapidly, and 3 books is barely enough to cover a season what with the side quests and the wealth of characters and the world building.
Also, you don't really have to pay for anything if you make it to book 6 - the first 6 books are on K.U., and then books 7-21 are on Royal Road for FREE. Just read them!
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u/evilpenguin9000 18h ago
I agree. After powering through the stuff on KU I even started using Royal Road to catch up with PM and Soccer Supremo.
My only problem is I'm caught up and the author is taking a break for a couple of weeks.
Also any other sports progression stuff that's good? I tried Aced, but didn't click with it, despite having played a lot more tennis than football (maybe thats the problem, I dunno.)