Here's what's wrong with the game

I know some things here have been addressed in other threads. But this is my rant.

Coaches

Clubs steal your coaches before you even get a chance to offer them a contract

They should be coming to you and saying they got a job offer and ask for a new contract - else tender a resignation. And your Assistant should be coming to you with candidates to replace the coach - or ask if you want to place an advert for a new coach.

Assistant Manager should be "assisting" you.

Staff/Player Contracts

Again - the assistant should be playing a bigger role.

Also - it's stupid that you have to click on each player to offer a contract. Very awkward, time consuming clicking around the screen offering contracts. Complete waste of time and energy. It should be programmed a lot better to make it easier with less clicks to offer players contracts.

Example:

Put them in a list on the screen with tick boxes down the side. Tick each box for each player you want to offer a contract to. Then click "Offer New Contract" then enter negotiations with each player on a rolling basis.

So I should be able to just negotiate a contract with a player, then it moves automatically onto the next one. How hard is that? It's a computer - programme it to do that!

Signing players

Far too easy.

2nd season with Palermo.

Neymar, Paulo Henrique, Simon Kjaer, Luis Suarez, Alexis Sanchez, Park-Ji Sung, Younas Kaboul,

All bought and I'm spending about €45m a transfer window.

I never seem to run out of cash to buy whatever player I want.

I almost got Ediz Dzeko too but I am not allowed to sign more than 1 foreign player a season in Italy.

Still getting players offered to me for their VALUE. Alexis Sanchez = 12m, Luis Suarez = 12m, Ji Park Sung = 5.75, Younas Kaboul = 7.5m

If the computer is going to offer me players then at least put them at 1.5 x or 2x their actual value.

Taking over the league

Only 2nd season with Palermo - my unlimited funds and the players I've bought puts me 9 points clear of the table.

This is ridiculous - Palermo are just outside the top four teams in Italy. It shouldn't be this easy to build a team to win the league.

It's only my 2nd season in charge. And I'm walking the league.

Ok I've went to offer some players contracts and couldn't give them wage the want - oh wait, adjust budget, there you go have as much money as you want.

Coaches and Training

In my first season with Palermo I only had 3 coaches. Yet I somehow manage to come 2nd in the league. Surely my training and players would suffer a bit from not having as many coaches as Milan, Juve, etc.

WTF is training and coaches for? I still finish 2nd and now 1st with ef all coaches? Surely this should have a more dramatic effect on the players performance on the pitch and in training?

I would like to see a lot more involvement in the coaching and training of the players. After all a Football Manager does not only just look after Match Day. There should be more involvement and rewards/dangers of bad and good coaching etc.

What if the coaches came up and said "Neymar was great with direct free kicks in training, with his form in training it's a good idea to put him as free kick taker for todays match".

OR

"Abel Hernadez didn't perform too well in training this week, but Micolli did well and should be given a chance ahead of Hernadez"

OR

Get a rating from the coaches on how the training went that week, who was strongest/weakest, fastest/slowest, most improved/least improved, in good form/bad form.

Where's the training reports???

I know you can go to the Training screen. But it shows you nothing. Sure you can go to the Attribute Development, Position Development etc. But that's for individuals...

Where's my report on training and who's training well and who's not? Who's a good worker and who's a lazy player?

Conversations with players - things already said

Coaches keep saying players should try a certain move or something. And I go to the coversation and it's already been used. Surely the coaches should know this. And more feedback from the coaches would be great too. You set a player to do something and you don't hear back for 3 - 6 months. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. Well I'd like to know if a player is struggling with the extra training. Cancel it if it's not working. What's the point in the player continuing some training if they can't do it?

More feedback from coaches please.

Getting a scout report by right clicking a player name

Absolute joke - 4 menus you have to access to get a scout to give a report.

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I've started many games and by the 2nd season I'm one of the best teams in the world.

Done it Espanyol, At Madrid, Aston Villa, Sunderland (who have an insurmountable cash flow!) and now Palermo

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All I seem to do in this game is sell off the lowest rated players according to the Assistant report. Then I scout for players and sign the one's with all stars filled (or at least only half a star missing).

You have a star filled team in no time.

I never run out of money. Coaches and Training seem to have "0" effect on match performance or players performance.

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Year 1 at Palermo, I had 7.5m to spend.

Finished 2nd in league. Then I had 45m to spend.

Signed 3 players for 26m - each with 48 month repayments and NO CASH upfront.

January window comes - I sell off the dead wood, players who don't play anymore - get my cash flow for players back up to 17m-ish.

So I go out and buy more players.

I get players offered to me at FACE VALUE. Good players.

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FINALLY

I am being offered 15/16/17 year olds that are valued at 1.5m and more by their club. Clearly at 15 and worth 1.5m they have some potential.

So why are clubs off loading their best young players? I mean, it suits me just fine! I don't mind taking the youngsters on board for little or no money.

It all seems a little too weird.

Forgot about "Selling Players"

Why do I need to get 48 news items with offers for the same player?

1 news item please!

"Here's a list of teams interested in buying player

ACCEPT HIGHEST BIDS"

I shouldn't have to go to another screen to say "Accept all bids and reject lower offers"

Very time consuming especially when you're trying to offload about 10 players.

I don't need 108 news items about players I'm trying to sell.

if you're as good as you claim, why not try being a lower league team and getting them to be the biggest in their country?

And as for it taking to long to get scout reports etc. just stop being lazy, does it honestly take that long??

Personally, I think 4 clicks for an important function is poor UI and can be improved. For example, sticking the "scout player" on the right-click menu immediately.

Not about getting a scout report - it's not about the amount of time it takes to get feedback???

It's not lazyness because I do it. It could be done by "Right click>get scout report".

A small annoyance - but it's not lazyness on my part???

That with other things that take far too long to accomplish than they should - like offering contracts to your players. Or selling your players.

It's more about the GUI being inept than me being lazy? And I can't be lazy if I'm doing it and see that it can be improved and post about it here needing improvement. And it does need improvement.

Anything that makes things quicker and easier to do in-game (from a UI perspective) is a plus.

Like loans - say you get 20 loan deals back for a player. A screen that shows every single loan offer from every club, with all the options (i.e. loan fee, can be recalled, etc.) appears. You then add/modify options for each offer and click "negotiate" or "accept" if you think the offer is acceptable. Suddenly it has gone from 4+ clicks per deal (open email, click negotiate, add options, click accept) to 2 clicks to get into this funky screen, and 3 clicks per deal. So you have gone from 20 * 4+ clicks (=80+) to 2+20*3+ clicks (=62+). In addition, it makes comparison of deals really easy.

Personally, I think 4 clicks for an important function is poor UI and can be improved. For example, sticking the "scout player" on the right-click menu immediately.

Okie, what scout should do it? And for how long?

Might be done with a "main" scout for that option, and a configurable amont of report, but not sure how it would work.

I, at least, have a scout for young players and other for 23+ ones...

I know what you mean. If I want to put players out to loan I'd prefer the screen to have:

Can be recalled - non negotiable

No future fee - non negotiable

Play at least - x amount of games

I hate putting players for loan as I have to go through each News item to see who is going to put them in the first team... after all I want my loan players to play etc.

After I filter through all the teams I then have to go negotiate and take off the Future Fee etc. and then accept the bid.

It's just an annoying thing that takes too long to do - and coupled with the other annoying things that are time consuming and could certainly be improved with a better UI.

Okie, what scout should do it? And for how long?

Might be done with a "main" scout for that option, and a configurable amont of report, but not sure how it would work.

I, at least, have a scout for young players and other for 23+ ones...

Well lets see - I'm scouting a 16 year old playing Italy - will I send my English scout with a broad knowledge of England, and has a Judge Player Potential rating of 2, will I send him to Italy to look at this guy? Or maybe I'll send my Italian scout, with a wide network in Italy, who has a JPP of 18!!!

Seriously, some automation required for the scouting process - surely? Automation means the computer picks the best scout, but in real life it's called common sense

Well lets see - I'm scouting a 16 year old playing Italy - will I send my English scout with a broad knowledge of England, and has a Judge Player Potential rating of 2, will I send him to Italy to look at this guy? Or maybe I'll send my Italian scout, with a wide network in Italy, who has a JPP of 18!!!

Seriously, some automation required for the scouting process - surely? Automation means the computer picks the best scout, but in real life it's called common sense

OKay. Will I send my Italian scot with JPP of 13, or my English-speaking Englishman but with JPP of 20?

Extreme cases are very easy to decide, but decision-making computer programs are among the hardest to do =)

I admit some automatization is good (hey, especially on the whole loan things >> that annoys me too) but computers don't have common sense, so I disagree on the scouts point.

Okie, what scout should do it? And for how long?

Might be done with a "main" scout for that option, and a configurable amont of report, but not sure how it would work.

I, at least, have a scout for young players and other for 23+ ones...

I would argue that the manager doesn't really pick unless he has a reason to. All Sir Alex Ferguson probably does is tell one of his scouts (maybe the head scout of some region) to scout some player, and that head scout does the rest. He could, of course, tell a specific scout to look at a player.

but you can get a scout report on a player by right clicking on the name and then going through the options.

if you're as good as you claim, why not try being a lower league team and getting them to be the biggest in their country?

And as for it taking to long to get scout reports etc. just stop being lazy, does it honestly take that long??

Thats not the point. The OP is right, why should playing at that level be so easy? Honestly, you LLM managers are so self righteous! You say that managing bigger clubs is supposed to be easy. Why? Do Chelsea win everything every year comfortably? Do Man U? How about Arsenal? The OP right, its far too easy at a higher lever. Palermo, who are outside the top teams in Italy and will probably stay there. Its stupid. Also, you only ever look at players outside your own team so you can scout them. Why then should we have to go through 4 menu's to do that?

Rant over.

Sorry for calling you self righteous

Some excellent points in there. Especially about getting 100+ messages about transfer offers for a player(s) and PPM training progress updates (or lack thereof).

It certainly is too easy to sign superior players. This should be the main point that SI look to address before any of the others (which are largely cosmetic).

The UI has improved over the years, but it still needs lots of improvement, mainly getting simple tasks done should be a lot easier than it is. Very drawn out long winded to go about doing mundane tasks.

The game is excellent. But I'd prefer to start off with, say, Palmero, and really have to work hard to get them into the top 3 in Italy. Should be taking me about 5 or 6 seasons. Currently in the second season and walking the league.

As I say, it's not just this team I've done it with Sunderland for heavens sake. I signed Dzeko, Neymar, Sahko etc. for Sunderland all in the 3rd and 4th season in charge. By the 5th season I was the Champions League winners.

Ok the game is meant to be fun. And you're supposed to be able to get the teams to perform above par and propel them up the table. That is the point of the game. But at the moment it is just tooooo easy to get there.

I shouldn't have money thrown at me. I shouldn't be able to sign a player and pay the club over 48 months. With 45m I can sign 4 or 5 players for 26m each - the board should be stepping in and saying that I can't sign any more players for that value etc.

What's the point in the game if the Board just keep throwing money at you and you can buy any player in the player Search screen after the assistant has filtered them.

I agree with the stuff about coaches and training, there should be much more emphasis on these areas. Coaches do more than just take training, and I like the recommendations of the OP. And the problems of clubs stealing your coaches really bugs the hell out of me.

I think that coaches thing bugs everyone. I really thought it was going to be fixed in FM11 - it's a pity it's still in the game.

I really don't expect all the things that I don't like to be fixed. But it's nice to get a consensus on how everyone else feels about it. Even if only one or two are fixed and improved for the next release it's a step in the right direction

I agree with most of these issues.

The game just has to become a bit smarter and flexible.

For example in my 2nd season with Barca I am off to a shockingly bad start, 1 win after 5 games after having gone undefeated my first season.. I get a press conference question asking me just how happy I am with my new signing Jesus Navas. Guy cost me 52 million (not nearly worth it, but needed a right winger and had a boat load of money) and has so far been my worst performer by quite a bit, and they want me to praise him? He had a rating of 6.60 or something, I don't think that's a good rating, especially in a team like Barca.

So yeah, bit more flexibility in the AI, there's just no way I should be getting that question when the guy is clearly under-performing and cost 52 mill, it's just dumb.

Same goes for many other questions, it just tilts me having to answer dumb questions where you can also sometimes get the same question twice, just re-written but still the same. I mean what's the point. The concept is good, but something is wrong when you just cbf with it and leave it to your ass.manager all the time..

Anything that makes things quicker and easier to do in-game (from a UI perspective) is a plus.

Like loans - say you get 20 loan deals back for a player. A screen that shows every single loan offer from every club, with all the options (i.e. loan fee, can be recalled, etc.) appears. You then add/modify options for each offer and click "negotiate" or "accept" if you think the offer is acceptable. Suddenly it has gone from 4+ clicks per deal (open email, click negotiate, add options, click accept) to 2 clicks to get into this funky screen, and 3 clicks per deal. So you have gone from 20 * 4+ clicks (=80+) to 2+20*3+ clicks (=62+). In addition, it makes comparison of deals really easy.

Unless i'm reading it wrong.. you can already do this by going to the transfer centre screen, picking all the offers with a shift+click and negotiate them to your condition with one single interaction.

I agree though that the UI could use some tweaking to reduce unnecessary clicks.. namely the scouting one, you should have an option of having a predetermined scout to just right-click and scout a player instead of having to go through 5 or 6 menus..

Unless i'm reading it wrong.. you can already do this by going to the transfer centre screen, picking all the offers with a shift+click and negotiate them to your condition with one single interaction.

I agree though that the UI could use some tweaking to reduce unnecessary clicks.. namely the scouting one, you should have an option of having a predetermined scout to just right-click and scout a player instead of having to go through 5 or 6 menus..

But you can't see the details of all the loans at once.

And you can't "mass-edit" the deals, which is what the screen would be good for. For example, you can tick a box to make all the loan deals have the clause "can be recalled".