Make Career Mode More Challenging: Our Rules

Despite its many flaws, we come back to career mode every year. One thing has always bugged us though and that’s how easy the game is. We’re not just talking about the gameplay, but the actual club management. It’s really not difficult to turn a mediocre club with limited funds into Champions League winners within a few seasons. So we’ve compiled all the ways we’ve tried to make career mode more challenging. 

It’s really up to you which ones you pick, read through the list first and then decide. Don’t forget that these can be combined with any of our career mode challenges.

Team Selection

• Start small – choose a team with a low transfer budget.

Gameplay

• Up the difficulty – If you’re not already playing on the highest difficulty setting, go up a level. It might be difficult or frustrating at first, but you will adapt eventually.
• Alternate between difficulties – If you already play on the higher difficulties, try constantly alternating between them. Most people adapt quickly to playing against the play style used by each difficulty, rotating between them will keep you on your toes. For example you would pick Legendary difficulty when starting your career, but every second game switch the difficulty to Ultimate.

Finances

This is one of the key areas you should focus on if you’re serious about making career mode more challenging.

• Limit your transfer budget – This one depends on how restrictive you want it to be. You’ll need to decide on two percentages. Percentage of starting budget and percentage of player sales. We’ve created a budget calculator to make this easy for you.
• Implement a wage cap – Decide on a realistic weekly figure that you’re not willing to pay more than. New and existing player contracts must not be above this figure.
• Implement wage bands – Similar to the wage cap idea but with more structure. This would effectively create wage caps for different squad player roles.
• Limit wage growth – If you aren’t using a wage cap or you’re well below it, limit wage growth to say 20%. That means if your highest earning player at the start of a season is on £100k a week, any players signed during that season can’t be offered more than £120k.

Squad Management

• Realistic squad lists – Abide by the rules for Premier League and Champions League by having a fixed squad list that is a certain size and contains a certain number of ‘homegrown’ players.

Tactics

• Use an unfamiliar formation – Don’t stick with your tried and tested 4-2-3-1. Pick something random that you’ve never used before and stick with it.

Transfers

Another important area of the game to manage carefully. Put some of these restrictions in place and things should be more challenging for you.

• Realistic transfers – If you’re familiar with the club you’re managing you should have an idea of the names they’re being linked with currently and the ‘level’ of player they’d realistically sign. If you’re not that familiar with the club, look online for transfer rumours.
• Don’t cheat – We love putting together the wonderkid lists for you, but it’s far too easy to have an overpowered team very quickly. 
• Scouted players only – You can only sign players that have turned up in your global transfer network reports.
• Limit transfers – Set a number for ins and outs. Say a maximum of 3 players in and 5 out (less in the January window).
• No superstars – Make a note of your highest rated player at the very start of the season. You can only sign players that are (no more than) two overall points above your highest rated player. For example, if your highest rated player is 79 overall at the start of the season, you can’t purchase players with an overall higher than 81.
• No pre-contract agreements – The further into the seasons you get, the more these pop up. When it starts happening to the best players in the world, it makes things unrealistic and too easy.
• Sell players at value – Set a rule for yourself, either at value or value + a percentage. If a transfer offer comes in that matches or exceeds this amount, you have to accept it – no negotiating to squeeze more money out of the deal.

Youth Scouting

• Scout locally – Only send a youth scout to the country that your club is based in.
• Scouting ladders – Prevents you from instantly scouting the ‘best’ countries, use our scouting ladders framework.
• Scout where you’re playing – This works well in conjunction with the ‘scout locally’ rule. You’re allowed one 3 month scouting trip for each country your team travels to play in. This includes pre-season tournaments and european competition.
• Limit youth scouting – No more than 3 youth academy players in your senior squad at one time. 
• Keep it realistic – No signing youth players whose lower potential value is higher than that average overall of your starting XI. For example, if the average overall of your starting XI is 75 you shouldn’t sign a youth player whose potential is 76-84.

Training

• Don’t train players – It’s considered overpowered by many and makes it too easy to grow players quickly.
• Manual training sessions only – If you do choose to train players, you must play the sessions yourself.