After spending five hours with a pre-release version of Football Manager 27 at the Sports Interactive HQ, the game feels like Football Manager again. The developer has gone back to the tactics board to deliver a more familiar experience, addressing the navigation and interface issues that marred FM26.
Return to form
Navigating FM27 is much like navigating any Football Manager title before FM26. Hyperlinked players, clubs, leagues, and nations go where you'd expect them to go, heat maps and cup draws have returned, and drop-down menus are back. The much-maligned information tiles still appear occasionally, but more thought has gone into when they are needed, with most information available in the inbox or editable within pages.
It's not perfect. You still can't fully navigate the world once the matchday sequence has begun, and clicking on a player or team in that scenario opens a tile that only shows some of the information you want. However, compared to FM26, FM27 is very close to what most Football Manager veterans would recognise. The improved navigation and feel are by far the biggest positive change compared to last year.
New tactical features
One major new feature is the Tactical Familiarity section, which changes how you approach a new save. The more complex a tactic you use, the longer your squad will take to become familiar with it. Both the squad and each individual player have a tactical familiarity rating, and some players adapt more easily depending on their attributes. Training has been reworked around this, prioritising tactical familiarity and winning the next game rather than improving individual players.
This means that if you come into a club that played possession-based football in a 4-3-3, and your chosen tactic is a 3-4-3, it will take much longer for players to get used to the change. The match engine has also changed, with stamina and physical fitness now more important than ever, particularly late in games. There's also a new tactical option that lets you tell attacking players exactly which area of the box they should attack.
Tweaks feature
The new Tweaks feature lets players make small tactical changes from the touchline without going into the full tactics menu. The drop-down menu is simple and concise, giving clear information about how each Tweak will change your team's tactics. While initially thought to be for beginners, it's a good addition for FM veterans too. For example, clicking "Shut Up Shop" makes all the tactical changes needed to preserve a lead, while "Throw the Kitchen Sink" makes the team ultra-attacking.
The visuals have also improved from FM26, with better crowds, player models, more fluid animations, more in-depth cutscenes, more accurate stadiums, and improvements to 2D Classic. After five hours with FM27, it's clear that the game feels like Football Manager should, with fewer but impactful new features complementing the experience. It's one step back, but two huge steps forward.
