Recommendation for fm 2012

Match Preparation

I think it would be good if the match preparation was expanded, and more options were put in such as keeping the ball, counter attacking, playing aggressively, going down easily, wide play, central play, offside trap and then being able to tick two or three of them to focus on in a game.

~ by Isaac Christopher

I wanna be able to train specific game actions with my team, like attacking moves, off ball running, corner/free kick actions, especially movement in the defence! Because that's the most annoying part of FM.

The defenders often look like they don't know/don't care how to behave in specific situations, like, they just let the opposition attackers do what they want. I wanna be able to tell them exactly how they should behave in specific situations.

And when it comes to attacking moves, I wanna be able to create specific attacking moves, the FM free-role option just doesn't work, even if your players are Messi, Pastore, Müller, etc.

Everyone who knows something about football knows that the space between the defence and the midfield is crucial, and I wanna be able to use it better; FM just doesn't allow you that freedom so much!

~ by Cruz

Tactics

I would really like more freedom in choosing formation; ability to move a player on the pitch to positions other than preset ones.

~ by redalert

I would love to have far more tactical control in the game and a tactics editor along the lines of the old player manager series of games would be ace! Where you can ask the players to move with or without the ball and ask them to pass the ball into areas you want and not just what the game says.

~ by paul1576

Tactical lines?

We all remember from FM 2005 to 2008 when you had the so called "lines" or arrows.

On your tactics page we had the brilliant system of being able to take a CM and make him an AMC without distorting your overall formation. Obviously you could tactically have a bit more freedom over how you wanted your team to act when they had the ball etc.

I was hoping this system would be back together with the new system. Obviously this time it should be different. Instead of just having these lines like the good old times. Why don’t we make a “defensive positioning screen”, and an “attacking positioning screen”.

In my opinion it’s a big part of the tactical making of a team. How often have you played a match on FM and though if only I could make a simple tactic of where I want my players to be on the pitch when we got the ball and when we don’t?

Most of the times you don’t have much control over these things in FM now a days.

But these “tactical lines” would be a wonderful addition for FM. It’s simple yet it could make a good difference in how well the team does and how well you do as a manager.

I would love this sort of feature on FM 2012, I think it would suite into the game without SI having to redo too much.

~ by RedArmy20

Let us import our tactics from FM11!!!!!!!

Example: formation settings, training schedules, set pieces, etc.

~ by joannes3000

I would love one of the new features to be "players position when you don't have the ball". For example, the way you set your formation on the tactic's screen well have a similar screen whereby you can drag and drop your players position when not in possession; I would love that.

~ by BenLFC88

Graphics

Introduce real stadiums to the game.

~ by Raul Balaiban

Stadium packs for different countriies where licenses permit, would be great to see real life stadiums, different back drops and not the same shops in background for smaller teams.

~ by John Wright

I would like to see trophy presentations and the players celebrating when winning a competition.

~ by Mark Chilton

I would like to see badges for all EPL teams. Also to be able to suggest or make your own kit design for your team either in-game or via the official editor.

~ by Paul Debman

Be able to design your stadium as well as your training facilities and then if your board have agreed to it you have to pitch it to them and explain why certain features.

~ by rywilson

I reckon they should introduce a stadium design interface within the game so that when you expand the 'current stadium' then you get to choose which corner of the ground you want to modify, and/or if you’re building a 'new stadium' to have the option to choose the location of the site, i.e. city centre, countryside etc. And maybe taking it from there they could show the cost implications of your decisions and how it will affect/ benefit the club.

~ by nhill84

On FM Live last year I noticed you can name the stands in the grounds I would love this to be able to happen in regular FM; it could add a more personalized touch or customize to tailor to meet your needs.

~ by naff123

Press

A more realistic press conference with artificial intelligence so that we can say our own words rather than choosing one of the options.

~ by Manish Munikar

I think you should get interview requests from a journalist working for a certain company. They ask you questions about anything and it is laid out like a private chat. Also, SI can make FM more realistic by having controversial issues e.g earlier in the season Danny Murphy criticised Stoke's tackling. Journalists can ask your opinions on issues like this.

For example: Jonathon Stevenson from BBC Sport has requested an interview. He will ask you questions on your team's recent poor form, and your opinion about the dubious sacking of Sam Allardyce. [ Accept / Reject ]

~ by MLR

If you’re a successful manager there should be Manager interviews with leading mags which sit down and try to get a deeper feel for the manager, a close up. talking about favorite players, vision for club, commitment to club, and relationship with board etc. [new]

~ by Antony Colby

Have more information readily available when the press asks how you feel about a particular coach. Instead of having to click into the coach’s profile to see how he feels about you, have that information on the interview screen somewhere for quick access.

Example: if asked for a response about Alex Ferguson, tell us how SAF views us as a coach - gets along well/poor opinion/etc - on the screen.

~ by joannes3000

Make it more like the real world, get debates whether the ball crosses the line or not.

~ by Jacob Htfc Rogers

I would like to be able to declare interest in managing national teams, not when the job is vacant but maybe make a comment that one day in your career you would like to manage your home nation, if the opportunity ever arose.

Also the ability to comment on a player’s international form. For example when a player in your team has been in good form for his national team, or maybe comment that you feel one of your players is ready for the step up to international football.

At the moment I just don't feel like there is any collaboration between club and country, It's almost like The Football manager world is a very narrow Club Only or Country only type thing, I think it would be nice to able to comment on a players international career / form / selection / being dropped.

! by SeedyKiwi

Finances

Spending the manager’s salary would be really fun.

~ by Rishan Thambinayagam

Using the money you earn as a manager for more inspiring occasions such as being able to cover a high wage for a player yourself. Or to do some educational trips to high profile clubs of other countries and learn some tricks how bigger teams play... more like getting insight on how the match AI works for those teams.

~ by Stam

Should be able to ask the board to sell naming rights to bring in more income. [new]

~ by Thomas Mark Peter Grant

Be able to speak to people from other countries for merchandise e.g. Japan, China, USA etc.

~ by Craig Wfc Blick

The ability to increase STAFF budget.

~ by gert78

If they cannot add the ability to increase staff budget, they should at least have importance levels for staff. I lost an excellent attacking coach because I couldn't offer him more money.

~ by Gurdit

SI should focus more on stabilising finances in the long run, as, after about 10-20 seasons, the clubs that play regular European football have amazing finances, whereas the other clubs (unless they get lucky with good signings) are all in financial trouble.

~ by Zonnegod

Kits sponsors. What is stopping SI from doing this as it used to be in Premier Manager 1995 get offered a selection of Kits sponsors to pick from and maybe every other season be asked by the board to suggest or be asked to pick an change the kits by a reasonable amount!

~ by naff123

Let us allocate leftover transfer funds in different areas at the end of the season.

Example: If we have 60M left over, let us allocate that towards loan repayments, ‘deposits’ towards facility improvements, etc.

~ by joannes3000

It would be good to have insurance for players injured during national team fixture. I lost Torres and Gerrard for 6 Months and the country just didn’t give anything, no compensation.

~ by AXELTAMA

I would prefer more options for clubs such as construct buildings, handling TV programs, setting up shops, sponsorships for training facilities, etc.

~ by croscout86

It would be nice if you, as a manager, would be able to set the ticket price for matches (and also season ticket price).

~ by ampren7a

Licensing

Being able to take control of German national team in FM2012.

~ by Mujtaba Amin

Finally add a Japanese league to FM (get the licence for that league), these is a huge market of players there.

~ by croscout86

Youth

Should be able to build academies over the world and look for talent in them.

~ by Chris Harvey

If I’m Arsenal or a team of similar stature and I want the best young players in "X" country then I could build an academy there. I know it could work and it won’t make things easier, I'm sure the people who make the game are capable of implementing that without taking the fun away from scouting. Just because you build an academy in a different country doesn't mean you will have all the best young guns from that country. You could have your academy miss out on a couple players forcing you to buy them.

Of course you would have to go through the board first and get there permission for the go ahead to build the academy also.

~ by CHRIS

Change the youth system and the way players develop.

This is how I see it: In real life football there is no such thing as CA or PA.It would be nice if skills would rise depending only on age, ambition, professionalism, talent and work rate, training schedule and positions he plays. Maybe a new skill (talent) quantified not in a number value but a star rating (like in scout reports) that would develop the player's natural rate of improving.

~ by ampren7a

It'd be great if the successes of a country's national team would have an effect on the quality of youngster's being produced in that country.

A national team winning the world cup would surely inspire more youngsters from that nation to take up the sport.

~ by Richard Law

Assistant manager

Have the option to ask your assistant manager to play one half of a match for you, either first half or the second half.

~ by Eelco Anninga

Your assistant should give you a list of best players per position. Now he tells you a player is 5th best for a position but who is 1st, 2nd, 3th, 4th???

~ by gert78

I want the "star system" to be changeable... for example, if I play in League One, I should be able to choose if the star rating should be set for League One standard, Championship standard or EPL; would make it much easier to place players in a bigger perspective.

~ by l3nnart

Team morale

How about creating an option to have club to club mileages in the English / Scottish leagues and give managers the option to apply to the board to have hotel stays for longer distance games... and maybe you'd see some difference in the players conditions during that away game and team morale would go up?

~ by Matthew Lond

They should put in 'morale boosters' such as taking the players to dinner, or a party or something. [new]

~ by Joe Hannard

If you are a successful manager and leave your job to get a new one, it should boost the morale of your new team knowing they have a great new manager. Especially if they're down in the dumps due to recent form and you're looking for a new challenge after the success you brought your previous club. Of course this could work both ways if you join a rival club or a club much better than your previous job. [new]

~ by Hadia Yawanis

How about setting player relations e.g. if you have a target man and then another one, click and drag a line or something then click play for flick on.

~ by Alex Cadman

Transfers

The game has implemented the concept of "direct negotiations" with offering players new contracts. Why not implement this same concept to the transfers?

For instance: my player has a value of 5M and some clubs are interested in acquiring him; I ask for him around 10M, this way the interested clubs either accept or reject the offer, but instead of them rejecting the proposal, why not making a counter-offer, perhaps they can offer up to 8-9M.

This is what happens in real life negotiations, when there is real interest, they try to work it out.

~ by ibox

I would like to see the possibility to set the transfer status of a player to "Available for loan, ONLY if he will get a first team role".

~ by Zonnegod

Another feature I have always thought would be good idea is the option to loan a player back to the selling club as part of the transfer as a bit of a sweetener in the deal especially when it is an exciting prospect who is used to that club and settled and can continue his development before joining your club when you require.

This would allow you to buy the player earlier with a smaller transfer fee and the freedom of calling him back when required.

~ by scatman86

If I find a good player and there are more interested clubs, when I place an offer they will also place an offer even though they already have 4 players in that position and they won't be using the player for their team and will end up selling him in 1-2 years time... ridiculous.

~ by mizie

The ability to stipulate in the future transfer fee terms on loans future transfer % and monthly instalments etc just like a normal transfer. It particularly ****es me off when the computer will refuse to offer 7.5M+ 50% future fee, but will offer 500K for the loan then 7.5M in future. No, I want 7.5M + future transfer %.

~ by godsgifttoearth

Scouting

When you are giving assignments to your scouts, and you have the possibility to scout the whole world, I would REALLY like to see that HUGE list of available countries divided per continents, because it is very annoying having to scroll through the whole list just to get to Russia or Ukraine.

~ by VeLiKi

Possibility to select whether I want a player to be automatically added to my shortlist just because I sent a scout to fetch me player report card.

~ by VeLiKi

Scout for specific player role (advanced forward, advanced play-maker support, etc)

~ by gert78

Maybe a list of free transfer players/ex scholars could be included in an email sent via the board when you take over a club (e.g. Gloucester City believes you should sign this player, John Smith (18, MC, formerly with Bristol Rovers) as he is local and without a club). [new]

~ by Adam King

Hidden Personality attributes. I'd like to see a personality part of a players profile where over time from managing a player you become more familiar with his personality attributes. For example after one year of managing a player you'll know whether each of his personality attributes are between 1-10 or 11-20, after 2 years 1-5, 6-10, 11-15 or 16-20 and so on until after 5 years managing a player you are fully aware of his personality attributes.

I find it strange that you can know a players technical and mental attributes to an exact number while you never learn his personality attributes without the aid of a scout utility or data editor.

~ by Evo

A staff shortlist would be good too.

~ by Evo

Agents and scouts should send the manager video clips of why they think a particular player is suitable for the club.

~ by Antony Colby

Interaction

Love the idea of sending players to language classes.

~ by rywilson

For players who come into the EPL or any other league and cannot speak the language, a training option should be to send them to a language school for a month or something for a nominal fee i.e £500 like the price of injections but in turn would make the player unable to play for 1 month or so.

~ by naff123

Ability to tell a player that he impressed you in training. Right now, I can only tell a player that he needs to put in more effort in training.

~ by Gurdit

More interaction with the fans.

~ by VeLiKi

I'd like it if there was some different dialogue in private chats. When I'm constantly negative I get fed up of only getting in response "That's an interesting point of view. Have you got anything else for me?" and when I leave it's always "I think this meeting has run its course." I know it's petty but that annoys me because I feel like I'm being rude.

~ by Wagger

Backroom advice though seems to mainly be bad advice so I ignore most of it. I wanna say to my staff hay guys we ain't looking great and need to pick up points now or we are gonna get relegated so lets get working harder and we can do it - But you can not in the game have these kind of chats which needs to happen.

~ by paul1576

Interaction with referees. Like if something goes against you, you can speak to the ref about it after the game. Maybe even speak to the press about it as well, but you can be suspended for it.

~ by Darryn Walter Smith Hutchison

How about fining players for using twitter and facebook.

~ by Adam Thomas

Manager profile

I wish you could add history to your manager in what teams he played as a player.

~ by macdab55

I would love if you as manager could add personal favourites and see it and maybe more than one team as favourite.

~ by macdab55

I would simply love to add dislikes in my status. e.g. I'd eat my underwear if i could add that I simply hate Dusan Bajevic and Angelos Anastasiadis.

~ by Gith

Contract negotiations

Even if player ain't interested to sign to your team you could still offer him a contract.

~ by macdab55

The possibility to change my contract offer. Sometimes, when one of my players has less than half a year of contract left, I offer them a contract and try to get down the wage as far as possible, but a few hours after I offered it, another (bigger) team offers them a contract as well. So to make sure they don't reject my down-negotiated contract, I want to change my contract offer. But FM only gives me the option to withdraw my previous offer, and when I do this and try to offer my player a new contract, he tells me that he is no longer interested, because I removed the last offer...

~ by Zonnegod

How about pay-as-you-play contracts for players? also would be good for older players and injury prone ones, but make it easier for players to accept this contract if they know they are old or injury prone. [new]

~ by Liam Heaton

Actually, the entire feature of players rejecting to listen to your offer is the worst change I have seen from FM2010 to FM2011. Because after spending lots of time finding a good player who fits your transfer budget and managing to get your offer accepted, it is indescribably frustrating to see that red text-balloon telling you the player doesn't want to talk to you. Especially, because many times, you just know that a player would have accepted your offer if they would have listened. I think that the fact that a player will talk to your team is too much based on the past reputation of your team and not your financial capabilities or the quality of your current team.

~ by Zonnegod

I find it ridicilus that you can only give one contract offer to free transfers, so if another club comes in later and offers a better deal, you can't renew your offer to persuade him, this is not only annoying but unrealistic as well! SI should be ashamed that this is a problem at all since it's the main part of signing free trasfers, FIGHTING for the signings you want, not just give an offer and hope for the best...

~ by l3nnart

I would like to see negotiations going both ways i.e. players will ask for a better deal vs manager will suggest lower contract or transfer list. I have been forced to use the transfer list (not needed by the club) for a number of players because they do not want to accept a lower contract.

~ by bl007

When selling a player with a big wage to another club which cannot afford to pay his wages in full, then he will approach and ask that he'll leave if we pay the deficit. Yet the same isn't true when I am trying to sign a high earner from another club. At least I should have the option of suggesting it to a player which is interested in signing for the club.

~ by bl007

Match engine

I only ask for a better match engine. My team may score from 40 yards and I just can't feel that happy. Sometimes I give myself the time to watch the Goal of the Year and I end up saying: What a waste of time!

~ by ruipedro89

More possibilities for team talks.

~ by VeLiKi

Yell to complacent players during game to get better or get off.

~ by gert78

Random events / fan animations. For example things which could disrupt play i.e. people running on the pitch streakers etc. If you have a tiny club who beats united or huge clubs in a cup match the fans invade the pitch.

Or even better you can see people using flares in the crowd waving scarfs, you know create more of an atmosphere.

~ by naff123

I'd like to be able to save my opposition instructions so I always close down wingers without having to do it at the beginning of every game.

~ by Wagger

What I think would be interesting to see is a totally new team talk system. It could be like a private chat, but with the team. You can set an overall team talk, and comment on an individual’s performance to them, and see how they take it. You can also ask them questions like 'are you alright with that knock you got earlier?'

~ by naff123

I would like to be able to cancel a sub right up until the sub is made like if your about to sub a striker and he scores you should be able to stop him getting subbed.

~ by Michael O'Donnell

There should be some realistic instructions that you can give to your players. For example some player have 3 yellow cards and you need him in an important match so you should be able to say "get booked so you will be banned in the match before the Derby, I need you in the Derby".

And sometimes if the rival is too strong or one of their players is a wonder and damages your team I would like to order my players "injure him when the referee not looking". I know it’s not something nice but we all know those things happen in Football.

~ by inonu88

The crowd environment is what makes me chill when I see a football match. SI really needs to improve on that point maybe by record some songs of clubs (you'll never walk alone for example) who make football a show like no other.

Premier league, Turkish league, Bundesliga have the best football crowd environment; add that to our gaming experience would be a big improve to the best game in the world.

~ by TFM

Add commentator voice for matches. [new]

by Danny ZhenQuan Chay

Commentary by Chris Kamara... 'IT'S UNBELIEVABLE JEFF!' [new]

~ by Adam King

Player development

I would really like to see an improvement in the decrease of stats when a player gets older, as some players can last much longer (For example van der Sar who is still an amazing goalie at 41, but also quite a lot of non-goalies). In FM I have never seen a player who started under 30, who was still useful for a top-club at the age of 34.

~ by Zonnegod

I would rather see a complete revamp of the game mechanics, where the manager is only able to see how well a player is CURRENTLY performing in a certain area (for example: how much of his crosses arrive lately, what is his shot on target ratio, how well is the player doing technically in the past X games). This would, in my opinion, greatly increase the realism in the game, as in real life, stats can sometimes be very inconsistent. I know that there is a consistency factor between the hidden attributes, but I think that this applies to all stats at the same time, not to individual stats.

~ by Zonnegod

Improved mentoring system. I tried to create a mentor program manually, but it’s a chore trying to do everything by yourself - finding which senior players are willing to mentor which young players, and then having to do it all again when the mentoring is over. I’d like the ability to establish long-term mentoring where you can link players until one of them leaves the team.

Example: Around the time your assistant gives his preseason report, he gives a report of which players may be good mentoring partners. From that screen you can talk to those players and establish season-long mentoring programs.

~ by joannes3000

Training

I think it would be good if you could have like open training days in like proper football! So then you could get a youngster to join your youth team, and you could accept or decline them.

~ by Walsall_Craig

Training section should be improved. If we could see players training it would help us find more about the players (assuming hidden attributes).

We should have the option to plan weekly training, choose specific exercises, and get help of our staff if we feel too overwhelmed.

Testing some tactics during training would be interesting too.

~ by Drchaos69

Having the option to watch the team play an inside friendly a day before a competitive match, so you should be able to watch which players more likely deserve a starting position going into tomorrow's game.

~ by Stam

As much as I hate to say it, Championship Manager's set piece creator (where you can set up and watch the practice) is better than Football Manager's.

~ by Mark 'Tug' Wilson

Other

A thought - what about a War Child charity team which you could play pre-season if you're a BSP/BSN/BSS club? Celebs visiting your club would help boost your image and raise funds. Or maybe the team could be in a downloadable patch after the game is released, cost £1 to download with War Child getting 100% of the proceeds? [new]

~by Adam King

Club takeovers. My current club has had about 5 seasons of transfer embargo's and takeover speculation, but every single time (there have been about 20-25 possible takeovers) has failed so far. What's going on?

by Zonnegod

I think it would be a good idea if you could name in editor a new created team or new created city or new created competition if different languages like you could do in FM2005 editor because they would be different in other languages.

~ by macdab55

I want the option to disable regens when starting a game, even if I'd have to play only up to 2030.

~ by stam

Regens need to be a bit worse than they are. I always end up with loads of quality regens, that are so much better than the original players!! [new]

~ by Ben Howard

I would like to see attendance be linked to city sizes. Currently, you can take a lower-league club up to a top division and the club's average attendance will increase as your club reputation increases. This makes sense if you are managing a club in a large urban centre. However, if you are in a smaller town with a limited population, there is a natural ceiling on how high your attendance can be. This would create more of a challenge for lower league managers and also be more realistic.

~ by LondonCity

There could be a way to merge the nearby clubs into one team as a requirement to attract increased attendances. [new]

~ by Stam

Should have a staff recruitment option for other staff like groundsmen and the people who look after the state of the facilities etc.

~ by paul1576

In real life, managers have their own key staff members and when they sign with a new club they bring their team staff with them. So it would be a good idea to implement this in the game. I suppose it could be part of the initializing game phase, when you input your personal data we could have a new module where we could choose our key staff, for example, a keeper coach, a fitness coach, an assistant coach, a scout and a physio.

~ by fs1973

There should be a page which highlights the no. of supporters, (similar to the richest clubs page) which shows the most well supported clubs in Europe or World. [new]

~ by Antony Colby

They could split the 'supporters' into 'Local' 'National' and 'Worldwide', with each group less likely to attend games. [new]

~ by Richard Dende Law

Friendlies

To introduce testimonial matches... which means when a club puts on a match in honour of a player for service to the club.

~ by man_u_barmy_army

Maybe a 'charity day' for fans could be added in the same way as some team's have 'fan days' in the game in order to encourage more fans. [new]

~ by Raul Balaiban and Adam King

Allow more flexibility when creating an invitational league. 3 games in 3 days is absurd and we should be able to spread the games out and have a game every 3 days, for example.

by joannes3000

Speaking of invitational leagues, can those gain reputation like other established leagues? Would be neat to be able to create leagues every season and slowly build a history like other domestic and continental cup competitions.

~ by joannes3000

In lower leagues I can make money real fast just by arrange lots of friendlies against the same foreigner club. That's not realistic. For example, if I play one friendly match with my sub-19 team against a foreigner club that pays me 20K for the traveling, I can make lots of money if I keep arrange the same match over and over. In reality this never happen, after some friendlies they don't have more money, but in FM they have infinite money to give us with that method.

~ by Drchaos69