If you’ve played FIFA 2008, I’m not breaking news when I tell you the manager mode is a lot of fun. You have room to build a team in a number of different ways, a ridiculous and almost overwhelming slew of teams and leagues to choose from and a core system that works very well.

Transfers
The current transfer system is both a blessing and a curse. If you want to see what Ronaldinho looks like in Chelsea Blue before it happens in real life, you can make it happen. If you want to see how Taylor Twellmen does in the Premiership, you can buy him out and give him a plane ticket.

But at the same time all it takes is money. If you can pull together enough scratch you can bring Wayne Rooney to Real Salt Lake. If a club doesn’t seem interested, just increase your offer until it is accepted. And honestly that’s call it takes – more money.

Luckily the answer to the problem is already in one of EA Sport’s titles – NCAA Football. Wouldn’t the interest system from NCAA be perfect for FIFA? Rhetorical question, of course, since the answer is yes.

All you would need is two interest bars – one for the clubs interest in selling the player to you, and the other in the players interest in playing for you. This does a couple of things. First it makes sure the top flight players stay in the top flight leagues. You can throw a ton of dough at Kaka, but good luck getting him to play in anything other than Serie A, La Liga or the Premiership.

It also keeps competitors from transferring amongst each other unless one side is seriously overpaying. Last year the final piece in the puzzle for my Liverpool FC side was acquiring Robin Van Persie from Arsenal. Never in a million years would you see a player like Van Persie sold among two teams at the top of the league for the fear of exactly what happened in my manager mode – Van Persie turning a good team into a juggernaut.

A dual interest meter takes care of both of these things. The club interest meter will be influenced by the money involved as compared to the market value of the player, your team and the league it competes in and the players importance to the teams as a whole.

A player’s interest meter will be influenced by the new contract they’d be receiving, your team and manager prestige in relation to their skill, any jump up or down in league prestige, and their happiness with the current club.


Free Agents
The same interest could be used for players who are free agents.

At the same time though, one change that needs to be made is making sure any top caliber players aren’t landing on the free agent floor. There are tons of League One and Two sides out there right now kicking ass because they signed Drogba – somebody who’d never be left out in the wind to sign with whoever he wants minus a transfer fee.

In my Southend United franchise, I picked up Philipp Lahm – a then 25 year old, very talented left back for Bayern Munich who would go for a ridiculous amount if ever put on the transfer market. And here he is signing a free agent offer with a team in England's second-tier league.

It’s just not realistic. Teams are always going to resign these players and work out a transfer if it’s determined its time for the player to move on. Or if unable to reach a deal, they are going to transfer them before their current contract is over. Even some of the lower-tiered players have value on the transfer market and probably shouldn’t be out there too often. After all one clubs trash is another’s prize.

So unless a player is in the 50 overall area, or so old nobody wants him, there shouldn’t be free agents.


Recruiting
The biggest flaw in the next gen versions of the game is not being able to select your team's host country to scout. Personally, I have regularly canvased Europe looking for the best young talent only to find a handful of English or Scottish players.

This is especially true for the lower tiered teams who aren't going to be doing a lot of recruiting in Turkey.

I would also like to see the recruits come in at a younger age (15, 16, 17) and be more of a project to build into a world class player. This would require overhauling the progression system (see below about non-starter progression) and possibly require the addition of some sort of academy system.

But in the grand scheme of things it is pretty unrealistic to be recruiting 19 year old players better than Jozy Altidore, Freddy Adu or Ryan Babel that nobody has heard of.

While it is fun building your team through recruiting, I also feel a little dirty "finding" all of these level 80 to 85 players. After recruiting what is now my star striker I literally had to take a shower - Ace Ventura style.

Moving on.


Loans
Loans are another area that needs to be rehashed. In theory it works – you send your players to other clubs, retain their rights but they play for the other club who also pays their salary.Where this is most useful is taking your younger players and farming them out to clubs in the lower leagues so they can play and get experience.

But as the game is currently setup, you’re unable to see if the player is likely to play for that club (since you can’t view rosters outside of your league). And when you do make the move, there’s no guarantee they aren’t going to just be benchwarmers.

What is needed is a criteria system. Instead of just saying a player is available for loan, you should be able to put him out for loan as long as teams meet certain requirements. Among these, a set amount of playing time or role (starter vs. super sub vs. backup vs. bench), the prestige of the team the player is being loaned to (you might not want your prized prospect playing in a dump), and where you are willing to loan the player out (country, region, continent, or anywhere). In the case of playing time, you also need to have the club live up to the agreement.

Without this, the loan system will continue to be rarely used by players. Most will notice within a season or two they’re usually better off just selling a young player if he isn’t getting playing time, because more often than not loaning him is just a waste of time.


Non-Starter Progression
Loans are a nice segue into the next problem facing a Manager in FIFA – what to do with those players who are good enough to hold onto but not good enough to crack the starting lineup.

In a revamped system, hopefully loaning out a few of your prized possessions will be an option, but you always need to carry some backups and an option to some how allow your second and third string players to progress would be nice.

While I love the current expertise system, linking a player’s growth to their playing time and performance, the weekly practices we don’t see in FIFA are still taking place, and players do benefit from these in real life. Perhaps not as much as a star player competing at a top level, but players do get better on the practice pitch.

There are a couple of potential solutions here. My favorite option is allowing a scrimmage mid-week. This could either be an intra-squad scrimmage or a friendly against another team’s reserves. The players in these games would get expertise points just like in the real matches – but at a fraction of the total value. Fatigue from these games would carry over to the next game, so managers would need to balance practice for progression and keeping players fresh for games.

This combined with cracking a few real games would let some decent players progress and continue to be valuable members of the team – and provide an alternative to farming out your prospects. Even better, this lets the manager get a feel for his entire team and perhaps see something they liked and could utilize in games.

With the vast amount of skill ratings in this game, often a player with some sort of special skill slips through the cracks. For instance in my Southend United franchise I have a recruited striker named Theo Ireland. Theo is probably the fifth or sixth best striker on the team based on his overall – at 78 not very high for the Prem. Theo, however, is among the strongest strikers in the world (91) and great at not only bullying his way into position for headers, but also at taking the ball from defenders or midfielders starting their teams attack and quickly counter-attacking.

Many Southend goals have been scored starting with an Ireland shove and steal around midfield. Now if he hadn’t been a starter in the lower leagues before more talented strikers found their way to the club, I never would have noticed his value in creating goals through his physical play. I would have just seen “78 overall striker that needs to find a new home.”

Having a weekly practice would let players find similar diamonds in the rough. Perhaps your current keeper is expendabe because your find your backup is actually very good? And it works both ways. You might find certain defenders have a knack for dangerous fouls. Or that one of your wing players is really too slow to push the ball up field.

Another option would be to have a system similar to training camp/spring training in past football and baseball games. Each week your team spends a certain amount of time practicing certain skills. Based on your staff’s score, all players on the team will receive a modest amount of expertise points each week. But you lose the grassroots feel of watching your backup players on the pitch.


I Want To Be Like Rafa!
Little known fact: a lot of people simulate almost as many games as they play in person. Who knew right? The reasons vary but it happens.

One big flaw in the game is not being able to tweak your lineup before a simulated game like you can before a normal game.

Liverpool’s Manager Rafa Benitez would not be happy. There are, after all, flocks of FIFA players out there who would like to rotate 22 people through 11 positions all season long with little or no reason behind their moves.

In all seriousness though, you aren’t going to sport the same starting 11 every single match and while given the option to juggle before a match you’re going to play, any juggling you do before a simulation needs to be done in the Squad section and then needs to be undone in the same fashion.

For some reason most other games do the same thing and its always bugged me. Baseball games seem to be the lone ray of light – most let you fiddle with the starting lineups before any game, sim or play.

Should be a very easy fix and would let Managers do their job much easier.


Other Odds and Ends
There are a few other things EA could do. Personally I love the interaction with the Board, press and fans. More of those would be great.

A little more fanfare for big accomplishments would work. For instance, how about something showing the announcement of the draw for the Champions League or UEFA Cup? For something that is a pretty big deal in real life, it is almost ignored in Manager Mode where games just show up on your schedule.

It would also be nice to see some of the other leagues and be able to keep a tabs on what is going on outside of your current league. While I understand the challenges (that’s a lot of simming) at the very least being able to see what’s up in the league above or below you would be nice.

Letting folks add friendly matches would be fun. I’d love to see my Southend United team beatup on AC Milan or Ajax before the season beings. Perhaps treat it like scheduling in NCAA or preseason games for Madden.

A create-a-team function would be awesome. Create a team, jump in the lower league and see how far you can advance.

And the manager mode needs some sort of practice feature - especially for set plays like corners and free kicks from various spots. The arena is good for practicing the kick part of those, but it would be nice to practice the entire play from kick until the ball is either cleared or play stops.

This article originally ran on Dec. 10
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