Starting eleven and substitutes in a football manager
The starting eleven are the 11 players who begin the match; the substitutes wait on the bench and can come on during the game. In ELDT the bench has 7 places.
Picking the team is a manager's most basic decision: who are the eleven who walk out and who stays on the bench in case a change is needed for injury, tiredness or tactics. A good bench is not a consolation prize. Substitutes let you rotate when the fixtures pile up and change a match when things go wrong; in a manager game a squad with only one good eleven burns out fast.
In ELDT you pick 11 starters and 7 substitutes in the line-up screen, on a 2D pitch. There are two automatic buttons: Pick the best, which fields the highest overalls, and Pick by form and fatigue, which sends the exhausted to the bench. Both leave out suspended players.
The line-up closes 15 minutes before each match. If you did not save one, the match is played with the last one you left. With league on Thursdays and Saturdays and the cup on Tuesdays, rotating is the only way not to run the squad into the ground.
See it in the game: the manager's guide.
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See also: online football manager · guides on the blog