Manager Snapshot
This page really is all about you. It's an at-a-glance view of your performance as a manager, giving a fairly self-explanatory guide to the issues that should immediately concern you and general factors affecting your stewardship of your chosen club.
Use the Next Match column to make an initial judgment of your chances of success in your next game and as a starting point for your build-up to the match on the horizon. It's certainly worth also checking out the Upcoming Fixtures segment to put your next run of games into perspective. Remember that injuries will occur in Football Manager and that you may be well advised to save key players for important matches.
The Competitions and Standings columns should simply act as a way of judging how well you are meeting the expectations of both fans and the club's chairman (see Confidence).
Player Stats and Team Stats should give you a slightly more in-depth view of who the key players in your side are. Use this overview of stats to help you build a picture of players you should ensure you keep happy.
The final categories give you a snapshot of the Finances of your club, enabling you to see how well you're performing in your commercial role as boss. It's worth noting that no manager has survived the wrath of a chairman irate at financial mis-management, regardless of that boss' prowess as a coach or tactician.

News
The information hub of Football Manager where you'll learn about events across the football world and interact with the Media.

Jobs
Find out what managerial jobs are available and place adverts for staff in the Job Centre or review the Job Security of all managers.

Notebook
Review your notes on players.

Confidence
Gauge club and supporter confidence and approach your board with requests.

Shortlist
Manage your hitlist of potential signings.

Profile
See how your in-game decisions are shaping your persona and check your ratings as a manager.

Personal
Breaks down your basic personal information (see New Game). When you examine another manager's Personal page you can view his general happiness level and also look at his professional plans for the future.

Information
This is an overview of a manager's career, cataloguing the peaks and troughs of their time at every club. Reviewing these figures gives the perfect opportunity to take a trip down memory lane, or take stock of great winning runs or a good performance in the season.

History
This is a detailed breakdown of all your actions in a game. These pages should be your first port of call in any post mortem after getting the sack, for instance. It is often the case in Football Manager, as in the real game, that you can trace an aborted managerial contract back to one specific player signing or one misplaced media comment from which you never fully recovered your reputation.

Go On Holiday
Along with the following two options, Go On Holiday is located in the drop-down menu revealed by the Manager tab. If you need a break from the heat of battle, wish to sit out a pre-season or would simply like to give your assistant the reigns so you can sit back and compare your performance to his, it may be time to go on holiday.
This option is perhaps most useful for when you are sacked or you resign as you can set the option to apply for jobs at higher reputation clubs (ie all clubs if you are without a job) and hope an offer is forthcoming.
If you are using a holiday simply as a breather, you can tweak the options to make sure business continues as usual in terms of transfers etc. You may set a date for you to return to your club too.
if you are using a holiday to compare the success of your tactics with those of your assistant, you can leave the match options unchecked, effectively instructing your assistant to choose the side for each of the games for which you're absent. On your return you can evaluate the results and your player ratings to help you understand how to improve performances in the future.

Resign
There's no turning back here. Once you select the Resign option you will not be able to withdraw your decision and you will be bound to look for another job or face life outside football.

Retire
Even more final than the Resign option. Only click Yes to confirm you wish to retire if you are happy to call it a day on your entire managerial career for this game.
Of course, if you do have a change of heart, you can always load a saved game, but you might consider that would lessen the impact of your bold decision.

Other Options
There are other standard options that enable you to navigate Football Manager and Save/ Quit a game...
The World drop-down at the top of the screen gives you an overview of the clubs, teams and competitions in the Football Manager universe.
You can use the Recent drop-down to quickly skip back to People and Teams you've recently examined, a great shortcut if you need to refer to a crucial transfer target or your next opponent.
Using the Links drop-down on the screen will bring up handy shortcuts to all the non-playing staff associated with your club. As you familiarise yourself with the set-up at a club you can use these links to skip straight to the man you need to deploy on whatever managerial task you have in mind. It's worth noting that you should make full use of your staff - having them sit idle is a waste of time and rescources. Even if you don't need a player, for instance, it might be worth asking one of your scouts to seek out young talent, keeping you in touch with emerging starlets.
The Options menu enables you to manage your game settings and save/ exit your current game, as well as add a New User, for instance.