FIFA 16: 10 Ways To Improve Manager Mode

As EA Sports continue to push toward Ultimate Team, their primary cash cow, those players who prefer the offline Manager Mode experience are becoming marginalised by the minuscule number of changes made every year. The Manager Mode feels like something of a spent force and has left many of its once loyal following turning toward the 'dark forces' of Konami's Pro Evolution.

The simple fact is that not everyone wants to play online or spend real money to create some strange Frankenstein football club; wearing Cambridge United's shirt, playing in the King Fahd Stadium, and starting with Seydou Doumbia up front. Those players who live the dream of building the future of their respective clubs have been overlooked and ignored since the introduction of Ultimate Team, as EA Sports chases the easy money from micro transactions on its glorified football stickers.

FIFA's Manager Mode evolved over a decade, from merely playing through seasons as a club's coach to a fully functioned and vital part of the offline experience. Players were able to take their chosen club and craft its future from transfers to tactics. However, where it was once the cornerstone of the FIFA platform, this mode has been neglected over the last two iterations of the title.

So what can EA Sports do to win back those fans which its ignorance is haemorrhaging to Pro Evolution Soccer's classic Master League or even Football Manager's incredibly in-depth take on the world of football?

Here are ten things it must bring to Manager Mode...

A few years ago EA Sports introduced the idea of free agents to the FIFA series. For most transfer wheeler-dealers the Free Agent System was something of an aside, full of terrible players and a very rare gem who players could pick up for nothing and hope beyond hope that they would perform.

In FIFA 15, players were given the opportunity to sign players whose contracts were due to expire in six months. Seasoned players would have been delighted to be able to snatch up players like Real Madrid's Sami Khedira who were running their contracts down, but what about those who ended up on the free transfer list?

For some reason, FIFA 15 made it almost impossible to sign free agents with most, except 45-60 rated Macedonian internationals, snapped up by unlikely clubs within the first day of the transfer window. Anyone who tried to sign Angelo Henriquez on a free will have experience of this.

Introducing a system where players are able to bring in free agents on a trial basis might actually give meaning to those pointless pre-season Manager Mode friendlies and finally answer the question of whether Karanjit Singh can cut it on a rainy night against St. Etienne.

He probably can't.