My constructive (I think!) criticisms of FM08

Firstly I think FM on the whole is an awesome game, I've been playing this game for a long time owning roughly half of the titles since CM 96/97 and its without doubt one of my all time favourite games.

The last game I played properly before this was FM05, but there were a few things about the game which annoyed me, (I had alot of fun playing it, but had no where near as much fun playing Cm 97/98 or CM 01/02 which at the time, where brilliant) hence I thought I'd leave it for a bit and hopefully the improvement I wanted would be there!

I appreciate some of this would have been discussed, but this is just my opinion and the on the whole its a really good game.

1) Ridiculous transfer prices. I think the game is a bit better with the pricing than FM05 or 06, but on the whole I just find the prices to buy some players is ludicris. I made a £100M bid for Rooney and it was rejected! To buy Downing it cost me about £17M. To get Ribery, Bayern want £40M, Man City want £40M for Richards! It is annoying because I believe the problems are still here 3 years later. Its annoying because at times I'd get like a £25M budget and think I could splash out on some good players, but the prices are just plain stupid, ridiculously inflated. You also see some ridiculously high purchases from the AI.

Another minor critic w.r.t prices, is for e.g. Darren Bent being bought for £16M means his value goes to that, I prefer the older system whereby the value of the player was kept as the 'true' value, rather than the price- although I'm aware this reverts back after a while.

2) Regens. The biggest reason I could play CM 01/02 for upto about 15 seasons was because there was a very good standard of regens coming through, (same with CM 96/97, 97/98 if i remember correctly). Here after about 4 seasons in, I just loose interest, when I try to look for young players theres no one around! You never get any talented teenagers good enough for the first team, when in irl and when you start the game theres always good teenagers around.

It gets really frustrating that in essence the top players for probably the first 8-9 seasons in the game don't change at all! The international squads remain the same, the highest valued players in the game remain the same. Yet in real life, about 8 years ago, or even as recent as 4-5 years ago, the best players and the national squads have changed alot and 5 years down the line I guarantee they will change alot again!! I feel like the AI doesn't develop the youth properly. Another thing is most of the time I just play the game with one league, for the faster loading times and I find that if I pick say England, I find the proportion of youngsters/players in countries I'm not playing in, to how it was at the beginning of the game, just decreases and decreases.

Its highly frustrating because in FM05 this problem was around and its still here today!

3) As the game goes on it just gets easier and easier. I just find the budgets get too big and the AI isn't clever enough to challenge you once you establish yourself at the top, whereas in irl it gets tougher.

4) Media and training. First of all I like playing CM/FM for the fun of it, my ideal game would be CM 01/02 with the current 3D engine, I cannot be bothered to train my players and check their progress, I cannot be bothered to start mind games with managers, because it comes to nothing.

Half of my Inbox is filled with rubbish. I don't like that I don't get stuff like goal of the month, managerial appoinments, manager of the month etc directly to my personal inbox anymore. Instead its filled with useless media rubbish which I really don't care about!

If people like this stuff, fair enough, but I don't want it and I'd love the option to turn it off, or have it down to about 5% of what it is.

As for training, I don't care about it! I play this game for the wheeling and dealing in the transfer market, for setting up the tactics, the basics of the game which have always been around, I don't have time and can't be bothered to spend endless time checking attributes, checking my U18s/Reserves, altering training schedules etc.

I'd love it if you could leave it to your staff to develop the youngsters properly. He could then let you know if theres a potential superstar for the 1st team in the U18s/reserves, if you should start giving him some game time, if/when hes ready for the first team/if you should send him on loan etc etc

People may critise me for saying it, but I don't find training fun at all! I love playing this game for fun, but stuff like that just seems like a chore to me. I would love the option to just turn it off, just to leave it to my assistant- and for him to actually make the effort to develop players properly, rather than just leave them like in previous versions where there was this option.

5) This is less of a critism and for of a suggestion. I would like more records and stats available. For example when you look at the players history, I understand why its changed to just keep the league history of the players for consistency, but would it be that hard to just develop a simple filter, so you could have your players' history for only league, all, only europe etc?

I'd love to have say a top ten at every club for appearances, goals etc, that you could filter to say only FA cup, europe, league etc and same for the Leagues or euro competitions, world cups etc. Wouldn't it be a nice touch to have a top 10/20 all time goals for WCs or top appearance for Serie A of all time and see if any of your players could make it??

Its very simple but I think its a good idea that would be well recieved.

Conclusion! I know its a long rant, if at least one SI staff could read this I'd be grateful, if people disagree, fair enough. I think its a brilliant game, but I just feel like since FM05, there hasn't really been any improvement if you go deep into the game and the same problems are there. I appreciate that its an excellent game on the whole, way ahead of any other footy managment games, but I don't see the game rectifying its faults from 3+ years ago. I understand its easy it pinpoint these errors and harder to implement.

Perhaps this game would benefit if Eidos could produce a good CM title, some competition would do this game some real good! Unless these problems I have with the game, i.e. too many pointless features, poor regens, ridiculous prices, loosing interest after a few seasons, lack of challenge fro the AI after a while etc, I don't see myself playing this game again for a few years.

Any feedback would be awesome, thankyou very much if anyone actually read this all!

* correction, last game I played properly was FM 06!

1. Bayern want £34m for Ribery IRL so that doesn't seem too far off, UTD asked for £100m for Rooney because he's brilliant on the game and they knew you wouldn't be able to match it, £40m for and excellent RB compared to £24m for a sub standard RW Wright Philips IRL seems ok to me.

2. I wouldn't like to see them treturn to "regens", but there is a lot of work needed for the "newgen" system to work. I don't agree that there aren't any good enough players, there are plenty of "good enough" players, but not enough "world class superstars".

3. I don't necessarily think it gets too easy, it depends on the path you take. I managed Barca for 2 seasons and it was really really easy and no challenge at all, so I moved to VFB and it has brought new life into my game. You can make it a challenge if you want and you can take the easy road if you want, which is perfect IMO.

4. You could easily download a training programme and let it do all the work, I don't see the need to change it because there are options on every fansite.

5. More stats etc for us FM nerds would be nice.