What’s new

After your club's latest match you can say one line to the press, up to two a week. A warm line lifts every player's morale a little and a hard one lowers it. A link to a club, a match or a season recap now shows a picture in its preview. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

A live match now shows how many managers are watching it, and you can send one of six reactions while it is on, up to six a minute. Each side's reactions are counted beside the court. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

The season's awards are now told one category at a time on the evening of the awards day, the MVP last, and you can ask the board to relax the season's target early in the season. A refusal costs a little of its confidence. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

A fix: the notice two hours before the transfer deadline no longer stops the world on deadline day. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

New worlds seed their lower divisions in smaller arenas and pay them their own money: prizes, league payments and running costs sized to each division, so a second-, third- or fourth-division club spends about the same share of its income on its squad as a top-flight club. The top divisions, and every world already running, are unchanged. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

Before a derby each side may say one line from a short list, and you can follow a club, a manager or a league and read what happens to them. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

On deadline day you get one notice two hours before the transfer window closes. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

After three days away you get one note about your club, with what happened, and the dashboard opens on what changed while you were gone. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

Each round now names its Player of the Round and its Best Five, by Game Score, in the league feed and on the player's page, and tells you when one of yours is named. It is a record only and moves no reputation. Clubs run by the game also look at fewer clubs abroad when they look for a trade. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

The club president who handed you the club now writes to you now and then: when you beat a named rival, when a run reaches five wins, and when the board's confidence in you drops below 40. At most once a week, with his portrait. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

Once a round's prediction slips have locked, the match preview shows what share of the managers who predicted it backed each club, with how many that is, and the report adds whether the crowd was right. It is shown only once at least five managers have called the match. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

A new page under World, Managers, ranks every person managing a club in the world by how far their club is beating what its squad was expected to do, with the win percentage and a title counted in: the Coach of the Season's own score, shown live. Each score opens into the lines that make it. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

Each morning at 09:15, if your club played last night or plays tonight, you get one message, and a push if you have them on: last night's result, your place in the table, tonight's opponent and tip-off, and the one thing the dashboard would tell you to do. Tapping it opens the dashboard. On a day with neither a result nor a match nothing is sent. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

Fifteen minutes before your own match tips off you get a notice, and a push if you have them on, that opens the live match. The dashboard now shows tonight's round under your next match: every match of your league in tip-off order with each club's position, your match and any derby marked, which match is on now, and the score of one only once it is over. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

The live screen now looks like a broadcast: the court at the top with the score across its foot in each club's kit, and four tabs underneath, Live, Stats, Rotation and Playbook. The bench now warns you while the match is on: when one of your five is tiring, a little before your rotation would take him off by itself, or is one foul away from fouling out, a card names him and the freshest player on your bench, with a button that opens your rotation. If you script your own rotation, it also warns you once a player is below the point where the rotation would have rested him. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

Live matches now last the hour of their slot: a match is shown as it happens over about sixty minutes, with more of it every thirty seconds, and a club that plays twice in an evening has its first match shown faster so that it is over before the second begins. The live screen now shows the play-by-play, both box scores, the four factors and the score by period as the match goes, beside the court, and on a phone as three tabs. If you manage one of the two clubs you can change your five while it is on: tap a man on the floor, tap the man to send on and confirm; the change is made at the next possession you have not seen, and every man's fouls and energy are shown beside him so you can choose. Nothing about how a match is played changes unless you change it.

Life at the club now asks you things. A player who is ill, out late, criticising you in the press, offered an endorsement or unsettled at home arrives in your notices with two to four choices, each saying what it trades; answer from the notice, or within three game days the choice named on it applies. You are asked at most two a week. Discipline, personal matters and the press are always yours to decide, whatever your delegation level; from level 2 an ill or tired player is rested or played for you. Seventeen new kinds of event join the season once your world moves to the new catalogue at a season change, among them early returns from injury, training breakthroughs, courses, milestones, player of the round and the board changing its mind. You can now talk to a player whenever you log in: praise him, criticise him, or promise him minutes, a starting place, that he will not be sold or that the squad will be strengthened, and every promise is judged on its day. Named rivalries now have a page of their own, listing every meeting and the score that made the two clubs rivals, and their matches are marked on the schedule and the match preview; two clubs of one city are a derby. After every season you get a season recap, a public page with your record, the best and worst games, the top scorer, the most improved player, the honours and the stat that set the season apart, frozen the day the season ends and linked from your profile. The round game is open: call the winner and the margin of every other match in your league each round, 3 points for a winner and 5 with the margin, 3 more for every winner of a round, with a league table that puts the same points from fewer rounds first. Slips lock 15 minutes before the first tip-off of the round. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

Players who have played together now play better together. Every pair of your players builds familiarity from the minutes they share on the floor, a little more after every match, and loses a little after every match your club plays without them together; it resets when one of them leaves. The chemistry of the five on the floor is now made of three things: how well their skills fit, how well they know each other, and the harmony of the squad, and the lineup screen shows each of them with the pairs who have not played together yet. Your captain now matters: his leadership lifts the whole squad in close finishes even from the bench, the vice-captain steps in when he cannot play, a captain with real leadership raises the squad's harmony and a weak one lowers it, and a player who loses the armband takes it badly, more so if he is ambitious. A squad kept together for a season wins a few more games than the same players put together fresh. Familiarity is worked out from the matches your world has already played, so a squad that has stayed together starts with what it has earned.

Matches are now live. A match starts at its scheduled time and is shown as it happens, over about twelve minutes, the same moment for everyone watching; you can open it at any point and it starts where the match is now. If you manage one of the two clubs you can change your tactics while it is on: the change takes effect from the next possession you have not seen, and nothing you have already watched changes. The result is final at the final buzzer, so a match your club plays is added to the table, your notices and the league feed when the live showing ends. Matches between two computer-run clubs are settled at the start, as before, and can still be watched live. Nothing about how a match is played changes.

Every club now has a board, and every head coach a contract. A coach is paid by the club every day, about 25 000 a week in a top league, into savings of the coach's own; a new job, and every job held today, starts with the board confidence at 60 out of 100 and a contract for two seasons. Confidence rises with wins, more for beating a club placed above you, and falls with defeats, more for losing to one of the bottom three. Once a season the board judges the target it set from the squad it expected you to have: the title, the playoffs, a place clear of the bottom three, or not finishing last. It also falls if the club is in the red on payday or the dressing room stays unhappy for a week. Below 20 for a run of three to seven match days, a board dismisses a computer-run coach and pays half of what the contract still owes, up to a season; the first ten match days in any job are safe. A manager who holds the club has no board above, so no board can dismiss you: it tells you when it has lost faith. Nothing about how a match is played changes.