Suggestion: recruitment styles

[joshleedsfan]

In days gone by and as reflected in the current model employed by the game, the manager would have sole charge of recruitment. The manager may have a scouting team lead by a chief scout and a director of football to negotiate signings, but the ultimate responsibility would lie with the manager. This is currently reflected by FM, but it feels like the game has mostly moved past this, particularly at higher levels.

Football clubs these days tend to have people working above the manager on recruitment, the manager's level of involvement will vary. I think this should now be reflected in the game, with an initial three recruitment styles that vary from club to club and are set by the board. Those would be as follows:

Manager-led: the way it works now on FM and the way it used to work more or less universally. Nothing about the way recruitment is done on FM (barring annual updates to scouting and transfers) would change at clubs that operate this model.

Board-led (some manager involvement): the way it seems to work at the top level, particularly in the Premier League. The board appoint a director of football, with the scouting team also arranged by someone above the manager's pay grade. These would work with the manager to identify targets, decisions on who to attempt to sign and who to offload would still be the manager's, but decisions on finances would rest at board/DoF level. The recruitment meetings would reflect this.

Board-led (no manager involvement): you tend to find this at clubs where the owner likes to run the show. They might bring in a recruitment team and the manager may be able to propose targets, but to a large extent, the manager just gets what he/she's given.

I think it would be a big step forward in the realism of the game and would make a great challenge for those who might be more inclined to surrender control.

[kentonizking]

I like this as it might give you a second thought at taking the Spurs job as a journeyman until you gave enough clout to demand greater transfer control in the negotiations

[Zachary Whyte]

Thank you for the detailed suggestion. The devs will put this under consideration for a future FM.