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The fine was never real. In September 2015, a screenshot from Football Manager said Andros Townsend had accepted a fine for reporting late to training. His partner, Hazel O’Sullivan, read it as a report of a real Tottenham Hotspur incident and asked him about it. The message described the virtual version of Townsend in the game. Contemporaneous coverage describes O’Sullivan as his girlfriend or partner at the time, so the “wife” in the common version of this story is not supported by the reporting.
What the screenshot said and how it played out
On September 18, 2015, Townsend, then a Tottenham winger, posted a screenshot of a WhatsApp exchange with O’Sullivan and tagged the Football Manager account with the line “do you wanna tell her or shall I?” The game’s account replied: “Think we’ll leave this one to you mate.” Sports Mole’s coverage from that week records both the public post and the reply.
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Townsend’s later account, reproduced by SPORTbible in March 2022, fills in the sequence. According to that retelling, O’Sullivan had been searching his name on Twitter and found a screenshot reading “Andros Townsend accepts his fine for reporting late to training.” She took it to mean he had missed training and asked him about it. In the same retelling, Townsend said the screengrab came from the game: “She’s messaged me and it turns out the screengrab is from the popular video game Football Manager.”
Two different fines, one name
Townsend did receive a real fine, but it has nothing to do with training. BBC Sport reported in May 2013 that the Football Association had fined him £18,000 for breaching betting regulations. The two cases differ on every point that matters:
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#1 Best Overall
- An advanced strategy board game for 1 to 4 players.
- Become the manager of a soccer club and lead it to victory.
- A Multi-layered business simulation in the world of sport.
- Acquire and train players, hire doctors, trainers, and other sports professionals then develop your stadium, attract sponsors, and play matches against other teams.
- Several paths to victory.
| Point | Football Manager training fine | FA betting fine |
|---|---|---|
| Date of the story | Screenshot posted September 18, 2015 | Reported by BBC Sport, May 2013 |
| Source of the fine | A simulated player in Football Manager | The Football Association |
| Stated reason | Reporting late to training, in the game | Breaching betting regulations |
| Real or simulated | Simulated | Real |
| Main coverage | Sports Mole (2015); SPORTbible retelling (2022) | BBC Sport (2013) |
The confusion is easy to see once the screenshot is read out of context. A line about a player being fined for lateness reads like routine club news, which is why O’Sullivan took it literally.
Timeline
- September 18, 2015: Townsend posts the exchange and tags the Football Manager account. The game account replies.
- December 5, 2015: The Guardian retells the incident in a feature about Football Manager.
- March 11, 2022: SPORTbible publishes Townsend’s radio retelling. The audio of that broadcast was not independently reviewed, so the quotes above are as SPORTbible reproduced them.
- October 20, 2023: A later SPORTbible article says the game save was from December 2016. That date conflicts with the 2015 coverage and is not supported by the contemporaneous reports, so it should be treated as unresolved.
Football Manager at the time
The Guardian’s 2015 feature describes Football Manager as a football simulation in which players manage clubs and make decisions on transfers, training, injuries and matches. The series launched in 1992 under the name Championship Manager, according to the same article.
Rank #2
The same feature gave scale figures for 2015 that are useful context, though they are historical and not current product specifications:
- More than eight million players logged in each year.
- An average of 252 hours played per player during 2015. The Guardian noted that this average included people who bought the game and never launched it.
- A database of 320,000 active players across 116 divisions in 51 countries, with up to 250 data points per player.
Those numbers explain how a simulated player could carry enough detail to generate personal news items, which is the feature that produced the fake fine.
Quick Recap
Rank #4
- Counter Attack is a football (soccer) strategy game which lasts for 90 minutes. The two players ('managers') each control a team of 11 players. Every player has a unique set of skills that the managers try to best utilise during play. Managers control how the players move, pass, dribble, tackle and shoot.
- Duels between players on the pitch - whether tackles, shots or headers - are determined by a combination of the unique player skills plus a dice roll. During movement phases, a sand timer is used to keep the pace of the game up.
- Counter Attack features everything you'd expect in a game of football, from corners to free kicks, penalties to red cards and injuries.
Rank #3
- Powered by the Unity graphics engine, matchdays are more dramatic than ever through enhanced player movement and greater on-pitch detail. Feel the rush of weaving dribbles, inch-perfect through balls and last-gasp winners with player movements brought to life with fresh motion capture and volumetric animations from real football matches that give every attack more personality.
- A game-changing user interface overhaul primes you for smoother navigation in the managerial hotseat. The newly-integrated Portal is your gateway to the wider football world, surfacing key information you need, when and where you need it and empowering you to make the right calls in every situation.
- Immerse yourself in world football’s most-watched league with the Premier League fully-licensed for the first time with official kits, badges and player photos. Authenticity reaches new heights as you pursue the biggest prize in domestic football with the full broadcast experience from the best seat in the house.
- Discover a new world of possibilities as women’s football makes its long-awaited debut, seamlessly integrated into the FM ecosystem, as one footballing world. Explore new horizons with a choice of 14 playable leagues across 11 nations, including some of the world’s top competitions like the WSL and NWSL, and discover new stars with the biggest women’s football database in games.
- Make your mark on the pitch and explore the cutting edge of football tactics with the introduction of customisable in and out-of-possession formations. Redefined player roles and a dynamic visualiser that shows how your team adapts and moves in every phase of play levels up your pre-match prep game in, game out.
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