This is a fantastic story. Numerous all time great chapters. The characters are rich, funny, infuriating, and the narrative sucks you in and makes you invested in the fortunes of some tin pot little club in the sixth tier of English football. I've been a Patron for two years now, and I'll also be subscribing until the end. The author has a gift for making you nervous about each challenge even though you know that they'll surely succeed in the end. Chapters are sizeable and regular, and the quality is head and shoulders above the majority of even other top tier fiction.

Go read it.

 

Echoing the above. Really enjoy pretty much every single chapter, there's a good set of characters involved, and even though I don't have any interest in football, it's a very strong fic.

Writing style changes a lot - we have discord channel chapters, told entirely through podcasts, match reports, sleep-shortage induced hallucinations, and more. But they don't really ever feel overused, and the author doesn't fall into the PHO trap that so many others do

I've been following since about book one or two, I think? Definitely before the first one was published, which I've got a physical copy of. I don't like doing that for online fics, but I'm now waiting for consolidated print copies.

It's actually helped me connect more with my dad, because I now understand some of his football lingo.

5/5.

 

I am pretty sure I am the opposite of the intended audience for this.

football
litrpg
sports management

Each of these can be read with an accompanying shudder.

Gave it a try anyway, since there are three glowing reviews.

Got bored of it very quickly, not that far into book one.
Pros: casual writing was easy to read, side characters are established well within moments of being introduced.
Cons: despite the point above I didn't actually care for any of the characters, or the plot, and when I asked myself "do I want to see what happens next?" the answer was "No." so I stopped reading. Litrpg. It's not a terminal case - only one character has the power of litrpg, it's not a worldwide rpg apocalypse or isekai - but it's still just a "why is this spreadsheet in the book I'm reading?" flow-breaking annoyance.

If I had read more and it was more of the same, I would give this story a 2/5 on the original web-fiction scale. As it is: dnf/5.

 

I enjoyed the first story and most of the second one (reading individual books off Amazon, not RR/Patreon).

However, I increasingly felt that the author was forcing a xianxia story structure where essentially the story periodically resets itself only to tell exactly the same progression arc over and over.

In many ways, football is the worst industry to pick for a xianxia story structure. It is an industry where talent is spotted quickly and immediately rewarded by going straight to the top of the elite if you are good enough. Conversely, if you're not a top talent then you are never going to get anywhere no matter how hard you work.

The main character was magically gifted with both playing and managerial skills far above and beyond what any normal human could achieve. He should have gone straight to the top and it requires too great a suspension of disbelief when he gets endlessly stuck in lower leagues and has to grind his way to the top via looped progression.

But beyond the suspension of disbelief required for the structure of endlessly looping progression, there is the additional problem that it is inherently not a good story structure. It is repetitive and boring, and often frustratingly arbitrary, with the author having to periodically nerf the character or change the goalposts of the worldbuilding just to keep the progression loops going.

A linear, three act story where the character steadily progresses from zero to hero in a sensible timescale, with the author just ending the story at its natural end point - when the character reaches their peak and achieves all there is to achieve - rather than attempting to reset it, would have been a far better story. But that would make the author a lot less Patreon $$$ from endlessly stringing readers along.

I was also not a fan of the continued supernatural elements of the story. For this type of story I think it works best where the supernatural event happens to the main character but from then on it is all butterfly effect storytelling, where what follows is the natural consequence of that single event which changes the character's life. That is what feels fair to the reader.

But in this story, the continued supernatural elements always have to feeling of the author cheating - the author uses the supernatural elements/villain to interfere in the natural progression of the story and rearrange things in the manner of a retcon, usually to artificially achieve the nerf of the main character or moving of the goalposts necessary to justify a further strung out progression.

I would rate the first volume 4/5, but the series overall I would rate 2/5.

 

Fantastic story.
The structure might not seem too interesting but it is! Quite opposed to Xinxia stories, the author makes us truly care about the characters - the character interactions are one of the strongest points in this story.

I subscribe to it on Patreon and don't plan to quit -

5/5.

 

Despite knowing nothing about football, I'm enjoying this story quite a bit. Lots of heart here, and there's enough emphasis on the people that it doesn't feel completely overshadowed by the numbers.

LitRPG is cool in concept for me. I've been a big gamer most of my life. But usually it fails in execution when it turns out the author isn't telling a story that happens to have numbers so much as replacing the story with numbers entirely. I hate that. Which is why I'm surprised Player Manager has kept me interested until book 4.

I will say I'm seeing a lot of what Taure pointed out at this point, in that Max is artificially being kept down so he can have the same arc over and over again. I don't like this kind of endless narrative, but it's hard to deny that it's popular and not necessarily a Patreon only thing (though it would also be silly to deny that extra incentive.) The Stormlight novels do the same exact thing, with Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar going through the same arcs over and over, and I don't think the majority of Sanderson's income is Patreon. (Hell, maybe it is. 2026 is a weird place.)

I do find it similarly difficult to suspend my disbelief that nobody would give Max a chance when he's so clearly good at everything. The supernatural elements are likely to blame, which is meh, but who knows? Almost everything Max knows about Old Nick and the curse has been completely divined out of thin air. Definitely some Word of God stuff happening there, with Max connecting dots he probably has no right to be connecting because the author got impatient or just wanted to portray him as superhumanly brilliant.

I'll probably keep reading. Even if I'm sure I'll be disappointed in the lack of progress and frustrated by the repetiveness at times, I still want to know what happens.

4/5.