It is that time of the year when the big European football campaigns are over, and most of us have played the latest edition of Football Manager to death. Even if we are still enjoying FM23, which we are, we will all be looking forward to FM24 and what changes the latest instalment of the franchise brings. FM24 is due out on 6th November in the UK.
The new game is reportedly well in the development stage, with an announcement on the release date expected in September. FM is usually released at the end of October with a beta and then officially released either towards the end of the month or early in November.
The developers of FM Sports Interactive are very active within the community when it comes to ideas for the future of the game. We have looked at the FM community for the changes that players have asked for that we thought could be interesting in FM24:
Fewer goals disallowed due to VAR
Now this is one of my personal bugbears. Yes, I know that VAR is often called into action in real life. However, for me, it seems that every other goal is either looked at by VAR or disallowed by VAR in FM23.
I know FM strives for realism, but denying three goals a game and checking on two others a game is not realistic. On a few rare occasions, this would happen in real life (Cue people coming up with many examples of this happening!), but not as common as on FM23.
Better interaction with players
The ability to talk to your players more in-depth is one that we would like to see implemented more in FM24. Your interactions with players can be very vague.
One of the main reasons for using this sort of interaction would be to convince prospective new signings to join your club, which could be a way of attempting to get your football ideology across to the new recruitments that would enhance the game.
It is also an excellent way to better build relationships with your players, which obviously leads to players performing better on the pitch and the team becoming more successful.
Make it easier to sell players
This is a big one for me. Sometimes it is impossible to sell players when you first transfer list them. Yet, if you send them out on loan for a season, suddenly, there is massive interest in the player the following summer.
However, this can be frustrating, as the player may have lost value or could then be in the last year of his contract, which means he may not bring in a big fee. It is the same routine with every save.
Even when you try to offload some of your best players, there is often no interest in them. I have even attempted to offer out some of my star players for cut-price deals, and still no offers.
Sometimes you have to subsidise the departing player’s wages, and even then, no bids for your player. Clubs often subsidise players’ wages to get them off the books in real life, but in FM, it feels a struggle sometimes to sell players for anywhere near their actual value, even after contributing a huge amount of their pay packet.
More gameplay modes
This has been mentioned on several FM sites about introducing more game modes. One of the modes that have already been confirmed for the future is the introduction of women’s football, which could be an interesting option. However, it has not yet been confirmed if that will be in FM24.
Another game mode players have called for in the past is the option to work as a Director of Football, where you wheel and deal and help a team succeed while working your way up from the lower leagues to the elite clubs in the world.
Another potential game mode would be playing as an assistant manager, which wouldn’t appeal to us. However, it may appeal to some FM players. A similar game mode would be to start as a youth team coach and work their way up to the top jobs in football.
Like in games like FIFA, the option of playing as a real-life manager instead of creating your own profile could be a possibility. Once again, it is not our bag, but there will be players out there that this will appeal to.
A bit of variety in media management
Press conferences and media dealings in FM are slowly evolving. However, press conferences can be slightly repetitive, with the same questions and journalists. An idea floated by FM community members is to use AI systems such as Chat GPT to mix up press conferences slightly.
Unfortunately, I am not familiar enough with the likes of Chat GPT to know if that’s possible. However, if it’s possible, that would no doubt make press dealings far more interesting.
What features would you like to see in FM24?
