No big surprise, but looks like the game will be different for next season -

http://www.youthemanager.co.uk/

"a brand new fantasy game experience" sounds ominous, at least for the multis!

mmmmmmmmmmm

Two bits of good news there:-

1. YTM will be back next season.

2. It looks as if there will be an earlier launch date ("July") and better marketing.

At this stage, I wouldn't read too much into "new fantasy game experience" - that may relate more to porting to mobile platform clients (smart phone and tablet) than major changes to the game itself.

Hopefully reduce transfers down to 15 and increase prize money after the poor funds last year.

I would regard those as two of the least likely changes. The transfer level will probably stay at 30 and there is no way that they will increase the Prize Pool (already the best in relation to the number of entries of any FF competition) after the drop in numbers (to 32,000) last season; the days when YTM competed with The Sun for top prize billing are gone - realistically, they only need to match TFF's 50 grand and put a better spread under that (not hard).

IMHO, the area that YTM has to look at is the entry fee and they really have to make all variations inclusive of transfers. The notion of charging extra for transfers belongs to the dustbin of FF history, along with newspaper passwords and postal entries.

Agree about charging for transfers.

At a guess, they'll be looking towards interactivity, pushing the mobile apps. Could be a change of game if they stick with cleverTV; here's some blurb from the cleverTV site, re their german game

"Bild Super Manager

Super Manager is a fantasy football game based on the German Bundesliga, produced by cleverTV for BILD, Europe's largest newspaper.

In August 2010, the second version of the game went live - this time as a Freemium model, meaning that users could either play a Free version of the game or a paid Premium version. This entry format resulted in total entries doubling to 215,000, and thus enhanced Super Manager's standing as one of Europe's biggest fantasy games.

The game has been praised in particular for its close ties with real-life football management. Users must pick an 18-man squad, rather than a standard 11-man team, and they can only make transfers during set transfer windows. In addition to those features, the player values are actually based on real-life transfer market valuations, provided by transfermarkt.de .

The game also uses official club badges and player photographs throughout, adding to the managerial experience for users. Super Manager continues to grow rapidly year-on-year, and has firmly established itself as a leader in the European gaming market."

That would be interesting - and they are the sort of figures which (if true) might persuade me to change game format if i was in charge of marketing at the mirror.

I have never understood the paying for transfers especially now as they are competing with TFF and Daily Star who offer similar level prizes