Reduce or overhaul the expectations page.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

For me, I don't understand the 'minimum' expectations per season page at all.

I feel it is vastly overly demanding, and probably could do with some adjustment.

 

Except in certain cases (i.e. Barcelona, Real Madrid, or leagues with one club dominating i.e. Scotland); I don't think there are many clubs that have a minimum expectation to 'win the league'. In particular, in the English Premier League, where there can be anywhere between 4-6 teams competing for the league, I don't think anyone expects as a bare minimum a title win for all these clubs. 

Manchester United for example, are going through a dry patch at the moment, and yet in FM17 were expected to win the Europa League, Premier League and FA Cup as a minimum. That's excessively nonsense. 

I think the whole thing needs changing so it presents two goals:

 

A 'minimum' expectations goal, which is a line in the sand. - For top clubs, this would be "Top four", or "European qualification"

And an 'ideal' expectations goal, which would be say, a title win. This would make a lot of sense to me, Manchester City, United, Arsenal etc, all more or less expect to hit the top four as a minimum, and a title challenge as an ideal, Chelsea might stand out as an exception due to their chairman, but I feel the point stands.

 

This minimum and ideal setting would track historical positions, so strong clubs will expect to maintain success, but it will also track the owner's own ambitions, so we can have unreasonable chairmen demanding the world with poor teams, which happens quite a bit. But I think there's scope for balancing these settings somehow, so that the game brings the 'minimum' expectations into line with what most clubs would be attempting IRL, 

 

I'd also like to see the expectations for cup competitions changed to a 'planned target', rather than a minimum expectation. 

The reason for this, is knock out competitions tend to be targeted as the season goes along (see: United and the Europa League), or assessed on a case by case basis, but most teams tend to understand the difficulties of the cup format. Outright minimum expecting a win of a European competition is exceptionally ambitious, even for the biggest of clubs (Real Madrid's obsession with the CL aside), and outright minimum expectation of a cup victory is also quite a rough ask. I know the board take into consideration if you get a tough draw, but I feel these demands need changing so that they make more sense.

 

A club should target a hopeful lengthy cup run, or place a secondary priority on challenging for a cup if the board sees a mismatched draw. For example, if United get drawn with Accrington Stanley, the board should expect progression, and be wondering what exactly happened if not, but they're not about to throw their toys out of the pram over the situation. (The "Not important" assessment is perfect though, and should remain.)

 

I think there's scope to have like a board meeting in pre-season to discuss targets for cups, and I don't mean the board 'demand' things of you, I mean a genuine discussion. So the board could ask 'where do you feel the squad is compared to the rest of the league', and 'how do you think we'll get going in such and such competition' and 'should we try and go on a cup run this year?'

This could open up, not expectations, but a better dynamic between the manager and the board, perhaps as a lower league team we'll set ourselves a goal to have an FA Cup run just for the windfall, but not necessarily for anything else. Or as a team competing in Europe, if you get a rough group stage draw, you could revise the target with the board to just manage to not embarrass the club etc. Penalties should be minor, unless issues are persistent and the manager is being sneaky about things. Again, there would be scope to retain the whole excessive targets thing for chairmen with too much ambition and no sense of reality.

 

I know I'm not offering much in ideas here, but the main thing I want tackled is the excessive demands to be honest. I think the 'minimum' requirements aren't really minimums at all, they're pipe dreams; expecting a treble as a minimum is a hell of an ask to be honest, even for someone like Mourinho or Pep!  

[98765431]

If you are just a football fan then of course you don't always expect any of the team to win league titles. But if you are a fan or board member of a big team you always have that kind of expectation. 

A manager won't get sacked for not meeting the minimum, but surely will if he does not meet the targets for consecutive years, for example Ancelotti in Real Madrid and  Bayern. Mourinho will be sacked too if he can't win the league in the next two or three years. Also you can compensate one unmet target by overachievement in other competition in the overall satisfactory. If you are managing a weak team the board won't complain much about your underachievement in a cup competition if you are knocked out by a very big team. I think it all makes sense after all.

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.