Football Manager 2014: 9 Issues It Really Should Fix

3. The Agent System Is Poor

It seems all I'm doing is rubbishing the peripheral figures of the Football Manager experience, and to be fair, you're not half wrong. But honestly, there's a logic behind it. The whole reason these figures are peripheral is because they aren't fully developed into what they could be. Take the agents for example. While they play an excellent part in the contract negotiations €“ proving as greedy as they are in real life €“ their role away from the contractual sharp-end is far more nebulous. Indeed, the only thing they can do is clog up your inbox with stories about the next Ghanaian prodigy to come out of Serie B. I suppose if all you want is for agents to be a nuisance, then that's fair enough. But much like the journalists and the director of football, this role could be so much more. It's a cruel truth, but these days the agents to tend to hold all the power. There's a reason we've heard of Paul Stretford and Pini Zahavi, and that's because they've got a lot of influence over their large stable of charges, informing where they're going to go, and why. So really, FM should attempt to reflect this reality. Imagine, if you will, that you could actually speak to these money-grubbing gits personally in an effort to make their clientele far more amenable to coming to you. I can only imagine the boon it might be for a mid-table side to attract a super-agent with his high-profile roster, getting the backing of a man who can open new doors for you in the transfer market. It's grubby and it's political, but that's what real football is these days.