How Directors of Football could actually be useful

Seeing how the way backroom staff now work, I think when it comes to transfers it would be nice in the future if we could have a tab where you see what your DoF has to say in terms of the negotiations. Such as when selling a player, whether a club would be willing to pay more if its over X amount of months or after X amount of appearances to help maximise your dealings as well as when buying, what a club is more likely to see as a good deal for them.

It would give a bit of purpose to this currently pretty much cosmetic position, and would make the transfer market a lot easier, for a lot of users.

Yeah, they don't really have a function atm. Maybe some could meddle in your affairs depending on their personallity. I know in Norway there have been quite a few "wars" between directors of football and coaches (managers) when they haven't agreed on what players to get and how to play.

Even had coaches (we don't really have managers in Norway) quit in protest coz Directors of football have bought players the coach didn't want, spending the budget so the coach couldn't get the player(s) he did want.

if they had directors of football acting realistically on fm it would be an awfully stressful game

Maybe a tickbox when you start the game "use directors of football" Yes/No

Coz some would probably loose it if their DoF spent their budget on a player you didn't want.

Well as I said, transfer dealings advice would be better rather than meddling for FM. It is a case in point though, that you may be willing to part with a youngster, who has a high potential but you have no idea what kind of deal is best for you that the AI will accept as well. Because the AI often expects you to do a it a favour and sell this talented player for a pittance but when you want to buy one you have to pay through the nose.

It would be a basic platform for perhaps some crazy tycoons in the future who want a coach/dof approach.

for Fm09; they seemed completely useless. It would be nice to personalize them and have their own personal screen, after that they could somehow interact with the team at least up to some extend.

I certainly hope director of football play no role in this game, it will ruin the joy of being a manager because you no longer have full control on team affairs anymore.

Certainly a feature that needs to be improved in future editions although I remember in a past edition there was interference from the Chairman which amounted to the same as interferance from the DoF could be. I have no idea why this feature was removed, it added realism and difficulty to the gameplay. Ppl may get annoyed with DoF buying or spending budgets w/o Managers consent but it happens IRL all the time. Newcastle, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Milan and a long etc.

I'm managing Notts County and having Sven as my DoF i would have liked to use him for scouting ability Least I have Tord Grip to rely on.......

Also... do you think having Sven at the club affects the players who wanna join the club like it does in real life? (i,e Sol joining ...ok for a few weeks) etc...

Certainly a feature that needs to be improved in future editions although I remember in a past edition there was interference from the Chairman which amounted to the same as interferance from the DoF could be. I have no idea why this feature was removed, it added realism and difficulty to the gameplay. Ppl may get annoyed with DoF buying or spending budgets w/o Managers consent but it happens IRL all the time. Newcastle, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Milan and a long etc.

chairmans still accept offers :-S

Certainly a feature that needs to be improved in future editions although I remember in a past edition there was interference from the Chairman which amounted to the same as interferance from the DoF could be. I have no idea why this feature was removed, it added realism and difficulty to the gameplay. Ppl may get annoyed with DoF buying or spending budgets w/o Managers consent but it happens IRL all the time. Newcastle, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Milan and a long etc.

Chairman interference hasn't been removed from the game this year, I'm managing Celtic in FM10 and my Chairman decided to sell one of my young players over my head...and to a team in the same league as us as well.

Chairman have still had that ability, but I don't think anyone has had complaints about them buying players on your behalf this year. I think FM07 was the last time when a chairman would go out and buy a high profile player if you didn't do it yourself after he'd requested it.

Whilst many have diverted to the prospect of interferance, the main asset I would like them to bring would be one of purely providing transfer dealings advice. Not advice on who to buy, but when it comes to selling they tell you a deal set up which is pretty good and likely to be accepted.

Here's an example from my game:

Lyon want to buy Ryan Shawcross, whilst he's young and good I don't really want to let him go for a deal worth less than £10m; much in the same way we have "ask assistant" for team talks, it would essentially be "ask DoF" for the negotiation setup.

May work out he gets me £13 or £14m in the transfer deal, with it being more apperance based and say an initial fee of just £2.5m