After the rough start that was last year's entry, Football Manager 27 is looking to bring you in with a few free days of play before the game's even out

There still might be bugs, though

Football Manager 27 is still a good week and ahead out from launch, but if you're quick you can already get to playing it. That's because developer Sports Interactive have released a Launch Preview version of the game that lets you take it for a kickabout before it comes out in earnest.

As the devs explain in a Steam blog post, "running for the next five days, the FM27 Launch Preview will be freely playable," across all of its release platforms. "There’s no additional sign-up required, simply download from your preferred platform and begin turning your football vision into dugout decisions. This is your chance to get hands-on with the complete FM27 experience across all game modes, including Shuffle Draft, the fast-paced new multiplayer addition."

One caveat worth noting is that there may be some bugs or glitches in the game that the devs "will work to address in future updates." This, understandably, may be a touchy subject for some. It didn't exactly have a stellar launch, with early patches having to fix hundreds of bugs and other issues. Not that Steam reviews are the be all, end all, but the game is still sitting at a mostly negative a year on. It's very well possible that getting the new one in folks' hands early is a way to bring back some of the audience they may have lost last year.

Still, it doesn't sound like Football Manager 26 was all bad. Phil spent a lofty 227 hours on the game around when it launched, writing for RPS at the time, "That massive database of players, staff and clubs, layered so expertly over time with systems that make them all feel alive and dynamic, is still thrilling. It’s not a new feature by any stretch, but it feels overly punitive to discount it because the menus are bad and it chugs along whenever you press continue. It’s a bad version of a fundamentally great experience, and that means my brain’s going to be full of AS Roma matters for the foreseeable, no matter how many AI gravestones I see in my feed decrying the death of the series."