5. Give Us Customisable Formations
I remember playing a game many years ago, I think it was one of the Championship Manager series that enabled the player to literally drag and drop players into the exact position they wanted, anywhere they wanted. For me, this is where FM needs to go. Within my game experience, and that of a close friend, a good formation (or at least one that is aesthetically pleasing) is the difference between a long and fruitful career and those that fall by the wayside and are abandoned after the first season. For that reason alone the ability to customise a formation to exactly the way I wanted it would keep me 'wired' in for years and I'm sure the same can be said for a large number of Football Manager fans across the World. A massive flaw with the previous FM versions is the sheer volume of goals that your team concedes if you play anything other than a flat back four, its mind-boggling and for me a massive pain in the "SI", an unexplainable one at that. As I mentioned here my formations are typically very midfield-heavy, Barcelona-esque if you like but with the constant need to play 4 at the back I am forced in to the same 4-2-3-1 formation for almost every game I play. Frustration only builds when after a couple of seasons the regens come out to play, there is only so many 17 year old 'touted as the next Henry' players' you can have in a team with 1 striker slot to fill. Technically I think this could work, I think that SI (Sports Interactive) could use a simliar colour coding scenario as they do with the last few versions of the game, just flip it in to more of a heat map of where the selected player is effective and at what level. After all a football management game that does not allow you to have complete freedom over your team gives the player a certain aura of not being in charge.