5 changes FM25 needs to make this year

Football Manager is always improving. Year after year, whether it’s little tweaks to the game engine or massive overhauls like FM24’s set piece changes, Sports Interactive is always working to improve every aspect of the game. But nothing is perfect, and as much as I adore FM, the game is certainly far from perfect. So, in the interest of venting, I’ve listed five issues I have with Football Manager that I would love to see addressed in this year’s game.

Please let me stop gegenpressing

So, you’ve just started a new save and you’re managing in League 2. You’ve got a fairly weak squad with a big target man up top, so you want a balanced tactical style that lets you play to your strengths. How about a route one 4-4-2? Bzzt, wrong. You’re playing a 4-2-3-1 gegenpress whether you like it or not because that’s pretty much the only tactic that actually works (I refuse to acknowledge all that asymmetrical formation nonsense).

For once, I would love to set a team up with a tactical style that actually makes sense. No fourth-division side is gegenpressing, but if you don’t gegenpress then you’re basically asking to lose most of your matches. Even in the Premier League, if you play a low block against Man City with a weaker team (like you’re supposed to) you’ll get torn apart, but play a high line and press into them and for some reason, you stand a much better chance of winning. All I want is a little more tactical flexibility, is that too much to ask?

Improved transfer valuations

The way transfer values work in FM is a bit of a mess. You won’t be able to buy an average player in terrible form for less than £30 million just because he plays for PSG, but teams will happily offer you a couple of million for the Brazilian wonderkid you developed all because you’re playing in Poland and not England. Viktor Gyökeres has been in blistering form since he joined Sporting Lisbon last season and is now valued by some clubs at over £100 million. If he had gone through the same incredible form in your FM24 save, you’d probably be lucky for his value to increase by £10 million.

Players aren’t valued in Football Manager by their stats or their achievements so much as by the countries they play in and the clubs they play for. While it’s all well and good managing in England and getting paid over the odds for your bang-average players, it’s one of the worst things about managing in smaller leagues, and I’d love for it to be fixed in FM25.

More meaningful press conferences

It’s not just me who skips most of their press conferences, right? They are, in my humble opinion, basically pointless. Sure, you can get the odd boost to player morale from it, but most of the time there’s no outcome at all, making them effectively a waste of time. I know this is FM sacrilege, but I actually think SI need to take a leaf out of EA’s book on this one. 

In FC 25’s career mode, your press conferences have an immediate, visual impact on player morale. Praise them and their morale goes up in front of your eyes. Berate them and it goes down. Get their morale into a sweet spot and they get a little boost to their stats, but if you go too far they risk getting complacent, meaning a drop in their stats. FC’s press conferences have affected morale like this for years, and it means I almost always do them, and it’s about time FM instituted something similar.

Also, let’s get some new lines in. There’s only so much ‘Assistant Manager prefers Joe Bloggs to Haaland’ I can take.

Playing as real managers

FM is ostensibly a game where you create your own manager and write your own stories, but I can’t be the only one wishing I could take over an existing manager. Imagine starting off as the young Fabian Hürzeler in your first season at Brighton. Do you stick with the Seagulls for the long term, or do you jump ship to a bigger club as soon as they come calling? You’re still creating your own story, just with a real-life twist on it.

You could also do things the other way. With plenty of fans slating Jose Mourinho as ‘past it’ these days, you could be the one to prove them wrong. Take over at Fenerbahce and return them to Turkish top-flight glory and try and earn yourself a move back to a top European club, reestablishing yourself as a world-class manager. Or you could just go back to Chelsea again – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Variable development

Jamie Vardy was released by Sheffield Wednesday as a teenager and went straight into non-league football. After years of sticking it out in the lower leagues, he earned a move to Championship Leicester City, and after a rough first season, he developed into a Premier League winner and one of the best strikers in modern English history. Ivan Toney had a similar path, plying his trade at Northampton and Peterborough before coming into his own at Brentford.

In FM, this never happens. If a player has a high potential, they’ll gradually reach that potential over time, but that’s not how it works in real life. Some wonderkids hit their peak at 18 but lose their touch over time and drift into obscurity, while other players blossom later like Vardy and Toney. Imagine having an average player suddenly hit a strong vein of form and develop into a star player, or buying a reject on the cheap from another team just for them to flourish under your management. These things happen in real football, and I’d love to see them happen in FM, too.