Football Manager 2013 Feature Requests

Summer is around the corner and like every year some of us start thinking of the next arrangement in the FM series, in this case it's Football Manager 2013. Our "Football Manager 2012 New Features we'd like to see" article last year was a huge success, receiving more than 335,000 views. As a result it makes perfect sense to have another go at it this year.

We won't be having any official announcements regarding FM 2013 until late August. This is common procedure from Sports Interactive and goes like that every season. However we do know FM13 is under development as we speak and the developers are always keen on checking out interesting suggestions they could integrate to the game.

I intend to keep this article updated with fresh ideas as they come up, so make sure to post your suggestions in the comments below, in our forums or on our FM2013 facebook page.

At the end of this article you will also find a fake FM 2013 box art I designed on April 12th.

---

FM 2012 currently needs improvement in various areas. I'll just go ahead and name them real quick:
* press conferences
* transfer system
* player complaints
* 3D match engine fakes & bugs
* AI squad building (trading, youth dev)
* training system
* match engine set-pieces delays
* manager interaction and networking
* scout assignments

Let’s get down to details now...

Training

We should be able to see how our players have been doing with a measure of attitude. So, on the Team Selection screen, I'd like a little visual indicator of how players have done in training over the past week; just a little green plus/red minus, or nothing if there's no real notable effort.
~ by Dave C

Introduce more answer options tied with training in press conferences, also in player interaction.
~ by Dave C, Sheffield Sunday

When a player becomes 'natural' in a new position, he shouldn't need to continue training that position to remain natural.
~ by sixsecondsleft

Complaints about "too much training". OK, but please include a button that says "request coach to sort this out".
~ by bolulu

Pre-season training camps abroad.
~ by Adam Frosties Frost

Transfers

Change the board hiring AI because it’s currently poaching from within your league most of the time instead of going for some "world class" coaches who are unemployed.
~ by Dr. Cheesesteak

The transfer rumours page should be a little more vague because in reality 90% of transfer fees are undisclosed, so the press speculate wildly about the fee and wages.
~ by brightonrock

I'd like to see more interest when you offer players on loan. I offer some talented youngsters, easily capable of starting for plenty of lower league teams, and offer to pay 100% of their wages, yet still get either no bites or only 2-3 teams with plans to use them as cover only.
~ by Jehiel

Give an option to offer groups of players on loan with your specifics - wage %, recall option, etc - to avoid repetition.
~ by joannes3000

Add favourite and disliked attributes for managers and apply that in AI transfers. And likewise add favoured preferred moves. For example Guardiola likes small, intelligent, quick, technical players but also players that like to play one-twos, and will be likely to try to teach that preferred move to his players.
~ by noikeee

The board should restrict how many 48 monthly payments you're allowed.
~ by Eugene Tyson

The possibility of buying a player and loaning them back to the club you’ve bought them from for the rest of the season would be greatly received I think.
~ by coopie54

Offer players to clubs with wage percentage.
~ by Matshit

Dramatically increase variation between AI bids for players. Player is worth different amount of money to different teams in relation to their specific needs, ambitions, available resources, intelligence, willingness to risk, marketing opportunities... Also AI doesn't seem calculate the expanse of the whole transfer (transfer fee + player wages & bonuses + agent fees) when deciding whether to bid for certain transfer target or not.
~ by Govnar1

Contracts

Added clauses when buying a player, like extra fees to pay the selling club if the player keeps your side up (sort of like the promotion bonus), or the ability to loan a player back (I know you can set 'end of season' but it's not the same thing!
~ by brightonrock

Have one screen where you can negotiate with all players/coaches/scouts that fall within a specified date range - e.g. contracts expiring within 1 year, 6 months, etc. It’s a HUGE pain to negotiate tons of contracts one by one.
~ by joannes3000

How about an option in the holiday settings to automatically offer a contract extension to any member of your backroom team is approached by another club.
~ by Barside

Additional bonuses such as an assists bonus, a man of the match bonus, etc.
~ by PineappleBlender

"Pay as you Play" contracts for players like Hargreaves sound like a good idea.
~ by Shevchenko

Remove players/agents ability to see your wage budget and demand wages and fees relative to it.
~ by Govnar1

Offer players incentive for not just scoring goals, but also for tackles, crosses, passes, etc or even overall rating at the end of the season.
~ by Craig Harrison

Match Engine

The dugouts are stretching across 2/3rds of the pitch and 5 or 7 subs sitting a mile apart from each other. They should be smaller and the subs closer together; likewise have the physio sitting in there for when he's needed, and when a player is stretchered off, have him actually get stretchered off (by the shortest possible route!!). Its a bit of a farce when a player gets a broken leg and walks off ahead of the physio.
Also the ball goes through the stand when it's cleared; it should bounce around or something within the stadium, to make it feel more 'solid' and realistic.
~ by brightonrock

When I change to a saved formation during a match, all the opposition settings and shouts are reset. Fix that, please.
~ by Blinkenlights Faxlore

Ability to choose penalty taker once a pk is awarded.
~ by sixsecondsleft

Introduce ball boys, as it’s annoying having to watch your player run 20-30 yards to fetch the ball.
~ by J-ROSE
Or just make the ball teleport to the corner spot when it goes out. Also cut the delay when getting booked (ref-player strolling) and in case of injury (physio delays).
~ by Porthos

Lower league stadiums with seats only on 1 side of the pitch.
~ by b_raven

Pace and acceleration are too overpowered.
~ by Coentrao

Set up the Widgets where you want. Then hit the TAB key or something to hide them all automatically. Hit the key again and they come back up again.
~ by Eugene Tyson

Make changes in pressing dynamics and implement various types of pressing (such as classic hunting pack, one on one pressing (or mirror formation), space flooding, single pivot pressing, brick/variable pivot hybrids...). Improve/introduce dynamic repositioning of players according to ball position. This is necessary to enhance effectiveness of pressing.
~ by Govnar1

Reduce excessive precision of long passes. Only the best passers (Scholes, Carrick, Xavi, Beckham etc) should find targets consistently over 25+ yards.
~ by Govnar1, CityAndColour

Implement teams losing shape (formation disintegration) toward half time and/or full time as a result of exhaustion or lack of discipline.
~ by Govnar1

In-Game Shouts. I'd like the opportunity to communicate with players or team during a match, much like the pre match/half time team talk.
~ by Weezer

Scouting

I'd love to see FM go back to the previous method of scouting. The current system and the whole "one day report" really irks me. I've found it better to send scouts out to any country other than ones they have "full" knowledge of.
~ by looknohands

Scouting is definitely overpowered at the moment in my opinion. We get to see player attributes way too fast and they are always 100% accurate regardless of scout used. Not even the best scouts should be able to give such an accurate picture of players ability and certainly not on such a short notice. This should be much more hit and miss, even for best scouts out there. Also please implement option to completely hide players attributes.
~ by Govnar1

Competition scouting is the way forward.
~ by Barside

You could instruct your scouts and/or youth academy to search for players and develop players with the traits that you want: attributes and preferred moves. noikeee
A way to edit scouting filter without removing the assignment and recreating a new one.
~ by Eugene Tyson

When setting scout assignments, can we have "Continent" options, so I can just set a scout to Asia or Africa, as opposed to having to set them to portions of the continent? Or, can we set a time scale ourselves, and stack up assignments?
~ by Dave C

Would be nice if I could choose to not get these mass scouting reports. Maybe instead there could be some kind of list with recent scout reports which I could look into when ever I want to.
~ by kizaru

Give an option to automatically follow up regional scouting reports with a specific scout. I send random scouts out to areas but I want my best PA scout to verify how good/bad a player truly is.
~ by joannes3000

User Interface

Drop or redesign the training level bars. In all the years they've been in the game, no one has been able to figure out just what the heck, if anything, they're supposed to represent.
~ by Blinkenlights Faxlore

Display more about manager's playing style on his profile based on TC concepts.
~ by noikeee

A staff shortlist.
~ by Stam

The chairman i would like to be able to see a profile for a chairman, that shows his weath,bio on him,age ect. This is just a small feature. I'd also like to see a list of people looking to buy buy clubs.
~ by toon army 06

What about adding a Spoken Language(s) area for the manager?
~ by jj1974

I’d love to see Maps implemented into FM.
In the build up screen before the match it would be really cool to see the location of the two teams, especially in Europe. It gives you the distance when playing in Europe but would love there to be a map with each team 'Pinned' where they are in the world. I like to know where I'm playing and when managing abroad I haven't really got a clue when playing obscure teams in Eastern Europe.
~ by stretts

There could be a "Statistics corner" or something where one could enter to look for stats. The point is that I have always been missing the opportunity to see these "total stats" for my club or competition, and have had to satisfy with the records.
~ by Calvincito

Can we have a trophy cabinet? Display and show off all the things your club has won, and a personal one to show the things you've won in the game?
~ by Marc Kemp

Interactions

You should have a job interview so you could usurp slightly more prestigious candidates by answering questions about your ambition for the club, the ways in which you intend to carry out your job, your ruthlessness in removing dead wood or loyalty to players etc. One board may require you to keep certain players on the wage bill far beyond their sell by date or another may want you to play an attacking brand of football whether you are successful on the scoresheet or not. Have the option to bring your staff from the team you’ll be leaving.
~ by Jack27, Magnakai Haaskivi, Mr.Bojangles

There could be a board meeting every 6 months or so where you are asked to make yourself accountable for the performance of the team and other issues whilst maybe getting the chance to ask questions of your own.
~ by S2008

So far, all we have is "Feels the two of you could become good friends". How about we become good friends and I can call on you when I want to sign a player that has worked under you and I can ask you what his character is like before signing him? And then can you introduce me to an agent friend of yours so I can offload a "duffer" or sign my next striker? Or even ask you tips on how you beat a certain opponent, etc.
~ by RorysRocketThrow

There are so many questions that don't have suitable answers and being repetitively asked the same things over and over is just plain annoying. Either revamp it so it's not long an annoying chore or otherwise delete it.
~ by Niebiescy

Allow managers to ask for specific stadium improvements such as undersoil heating, a roof, improving the capacity by X thousand seats.
~ by PineappleBlender

Why give me the option to request feeder clubs when it is obvious that the chance of actually forming a link is close to zero? Just grey the damn thing out until the board actually have real options.
~ by BiggusD

In FM handheld, when you tell a player that they have to wait for their turn in the first team, the fans give their opinion, as do the board. this should be brought into the PC version.
~ by coopie54

When I have a news item about disciplining a player due to them being sent off in the last game, it'd be easier for there to be a box at the bottom of that news ietm telling me if and when they were last disciplined and what for, and how many cards they have received this season.
~ by coopie54

Finances

Improve the modeling of sponsorships. As it stands the rate of increase can be extremely slow. You can the biggest club in the world yet rake in a pathetic level of sponsorship money.
~ by PineappleBlender

Allow managers to suggest that loans are paid off when you have sufficient funds.
~ by PineappleBlender

Administration & being in debt needs to be a much bigger deal than it currently is. Wage slashing, selling players cheaply, a real risk of panic. It's a huge deal in real life, but in FM it doesn't mean too much.
~ by PineappleBlender

For small teams or teams in debt to ask fans for cash donations (like Rangers FC's fans idea "Rangers Fighting Fund").
~ by Jake Dickson

Editor

More features in the editor that will allow us to tailor the games "difficulty" i.e. things like the impact of morale, fitness, newgen quality, AI transfer aggressiveness. Basically anything that allows the user to tweak some of the inner workings so they can make their databases as hard or as easy as allowable.
~ by Erimus1876

Tactics

Trends in tactics. If a team proves to be very successful with a certain tactic for seasons, then that tactic should become more popular and more AI managers should try to play similar. And it would be even more interesting if AI managers could copy your extremely successful tactics and eventually use your own tactics against you.
~ by kizaru

Separate defensive and attacking formations (+ ideally implement fully dynamic formations).
~ by Govnar1

General

Add or Remove certain features you don’t want or set the ratio of what you do want within the game. E.g. Have press conferences set to 1 a month. Agents? Don’t like these, remove the feature. Maybe have options named so if people choose 'complete' then it'll be the complete game, other options would remove certain features based on their name.
~ by !Steve1977

Allow us to 'tag' certain clubs. So during holiday if a vacancy comes available either the game stops or the job is automatically apllied for.
~ by jozza800

Being able to increase the limit on how many items remain in your news from 225 would be a very welcome option. Possibly make it an option in the Preferences section?
~ by PineappleBlender

I'd also like dynamic rivalries. As clubs evolve, change leagues, play in international competitions, etc, rivalries can grow or diminish.
~ by cerud

How about travel having an affect on fatigue so that draws for competitions can actually have some sort of relevance e.g. players are more fatigued on the weekend after a journey to Russia in the week than they would be if the game was in France.
~ by Johnson993

Introduce a crossing-related PPM, something like "puts ball into box often" that would cause the player to try crosses regardless of his passing setting.
~ by Chochip, 5uare2

Yearly list of the worlds biggest talents not based on Potential ability, that would be spoilerific, but based on a mix of reputation, ability and age. It would be really great if this list would be saved like other awards, so you can see who makes it and not.
~ by Matshit

Make FM 13 64 bit, and give it proper support for multi-core processors.
~ by thomit

Less emphisis on results for managers of lower league clubs. More onto financial stability, long term building for future.
~ by Matt Scratchley

Youth Academies in game like on FMOnline. Any country you like, 1 to 5 stars and only if its financially stable.
~ by Sam Tiago Cartwright

A scenario mode would be good. Adds a bit of variety to the game. Starting with a relegation based team under a transfer embargo with there star player injured etc.
~ by Sam Tiago Cartwright

---

That sums up all interesting suggestions people posted in our website, the SI forums and our facebook pages. I tried to organize everything into categories, but please keep in the mind the order is random. If you spot any errors or you feel a suggestion should be removed from the list, feel free to comment.

I will be constantly updating this article until the first official FM13 announcement gets out, so most likely the feature requests will get populated in the next couple of months.

A big “thank you” to everyone who contributed to this list.

---