Football Manager 27’s first two deep dives reveal a redesigned interface, a more detailed football world and the return of some familiar features. But how much difference could these changes make to your next save?
There are two sides to a good Football Manager save. There’s the football you actively manage — your tactics, transfers, training and results — and there’s everything happening beyond your club.
The second part is easy to overlook. You might discover a promising youngster while browsing another league, notice that a rival manager has lost his job or spend far too long investigating how your former players are getting on.
Those little detours are part of what makes Football Manager so absorbing.
Sports Interactive’s first two FM27 deep dives, released in September, focus on making those experiences easier to find and more enjoyable to follow. The first introduces significant interface and navigation changes. The second looks at immersion, with expanded news coverage, redesigned competition screens and the return of cup draws and Transfer Deadline Day.
Together, they give us a clearer picture of how Sports Interactive intends to build on FM26.
For the latest confirmed information about the game, visit our FM27: Everything We Know So Far guide. Here, we’re taking a closer look at what the first two presentations actually reveal.
A More Practical Approach to FM27’s Interface
One of the biggest changes concerns something every FM player does hundreds of times during a save: moving between screens.
FM26’s tile-based interface combined information and navigation. Opening a tile often meant opening another card before reaching the screen you actually wanted.
FM27 takes a different approach.
The main navigation bar now contains six sections: Portal, Squad, Tactics, Recruitment, Training and Club. Tiles are primarily used to display information, while the main and secondary menus provide more direct routes around the game.
The intention is straightforward. Selecting Squad should take you to your squad. Opening Tactics should take you to your tactics.
It might sound obvious, but that’s precisely why the change matters.
When you’re trying to finish a transfer before a deadline or make a quick tactical adjustment between matches, the interface should help you get there rather than demand your attention.
The return of toggle controls, more full-screen views and dedicated control panels should also reduce the need to open and close multiple windows.
Watch the official FM27 Interface & Navigation deep dive.
Less Time Managing Messages
The redesigned Messages system is another change worth watching.
Scouting reports can now appear directly within messages, rather than requiring you to open another screen. Multiple transfer offers for the same player are grouped together, while colour-coded categories make different types of messages easier to identify.
Consider a typical January transfer window. You’ve got three clubs interested in your backup striker, two scouting reports to review and a contract negotiation that needs your attention.
Having the relevant information available immediately could make that process noticeably less cumbersome.
FM27 also introduces more contextual tooltips and new ways to customise the information displayed on screen.
The important distinction here is that Sports Interactive isn’t simply removing information. It’s trying to make that information easier to use.
An Interface That Adapts to You
FM players have very different habits.
Some want to see as much information as possible on a single screen. Others prefer larger panels and a cleaner layout. A laptop user and someone playing on an ultrawide monitor shouldn’t necessarily have the same experience.
FM27 introduces Default, Detailed and Condensed display settings, with layouts designed to adapt to different resolutions.
Bookmarks can be rearranged and given text labels. Keyboard shortcuts can be remapped. Selected information tiles can be swapped, and players can choose which screen opens when they select certain navigation categories.
These aren’t necessarily the features that sell a new Football Manager game, but they could make a considerable difference over hundreds of hours.
The real test will be how well the interface handles the busiest parts of a save.
The Football World Beyond Your Club Is Getting More Attention
The second deep dive addresses a different problem.
Making it easier to navigate Football Manager is useful, but there also needs to be something interesting to discover.
FM27 introduces expanded news coverage designed around different stages of the season. Pre-season previews, mid-season assessments, title races and managerial speculation are among the stories receiving more attention.
The News area is also being reorganised. Personalised stories will be more clearly separated from transfer news and wider football coverage.
That could help make the world around your club feel less like background information.
Imagine managing a Championship side and discovering that a struggling Premier League club has dismissed its manager. You investigate the vacancy, look at the squad and start wondering whether it’s time for your next career move.
Or perhaps you notice an unexpected title race in a league you’ve barely followed. A quick look at the competition reveals a young striker who’s been scoring regularly, and suddenly you’ve got another name on your scouting shortlist.
These are the discoveries that make a save feel bigger than your own fixture list.
Watch the official FM27 Immersion deep dive.
Club and Competition Screens Tell a More Complete Story
The redesigned Club screen aims to make a team’s identity immediately recognisable.
Alongside its history and squad information, you’ll find details about its manager, leading goalscorer, key performers, recent transfers and latest news.
Competition screens receive similar treatment, bringing together results, upcoming fixtures, important individuals and changing statistics, including Team of the Week.
A new Competitions Hub provides an overview of the leagues and tournaments included in your save.
For players who enjoy scouting outside the biggest leagues, this could become a particularly useful starting point.
Rather than already knowing which player you’re looking for, you might discover someone by following an interesting competition, checking its leading performers and exploring the clubs involved.
Player profiles have also received attention. Career History returns as a full-screen experience, while improved navigation makes it easier to move between players and squads.
It’s a collection of changes that could make exploring the database feel more natural.
And for long-term saves, that matters. The further you progress into a career, the more interesting it becomes to follow players, managers and clubs whose stories have developed alongside your own.
The Continue Button Could Change the Rhythm of a Save
One of the more intriguing announcements concerns the Continue button.
In FM27, progressing through your career can take you to different areas of the game rather than repeatedly returning you to the same familiar destination.
Sports Interactive has also introduced a Continue Flow system with Streamlined, Balanced and Comprehensive presets, alongside a Custom option.
These settings let you influence how often the game stops to show messages, results, fixtures and other information.
This is an interesting solution to a familiar Football Manager dilemma.
Some players want to move quickly from match to match. Others enjoy following every transfer rumour, managerial change and result across their football world.
Neither approach is wrong.
The ability to choose how much information interrupts your progress could make FM27 more comfortable for both types of player.
It also connects the two deep dives rather neatly: better navigation makes the wider football world easier to explore, while the new progression options encourage you to discover more of it.
Cup Draws and Transfer Deadline Day Return
Not every announcement is about redesigned menus.
Cup draws are returning in a familiar format, complete with a host and options to draw teams individually, complete the draw or speed up the process.
It’s easy to underestimate how much these small moments contribute to a save.
When you’re managing a lower-league club, drawing a Premier League giant in the FA Cup can be one of the biggest events of your season. Watching the draw unfold gives that moment a little more weight than simply receiving the result in your inbox.
Transfer Deadline Day is also receiving renewed attention.
Agent Offers will be available throughout the transfer window via the Recruitment screen, with activity increasing as the deadline approaches.
Sports Interactive has also outlined changes to transfer behaviour. Young players will place greater emphasis on playing time in certain negotiations, while sell-on obligations will become more visible in scouting reports and influence selling clubs’ valuations.
AI managers and Directors of Football are also being adjusted to account more closely for experience and leadership when considering recruitment targets.
These changes sound promising, particularly for anyone building a club around young players or trying to operate within a tight transfer budget.
But we’ll need to see how AI clubs behave over several seasons before judging how much the transfer market has actually improved.
Transfer Deadline Day gets its atmosphere back
Transfer Deadline Day is also returning in an expanded format, but the changes go beyond its presentation.
Agent Offers will now be visible on the Recruitment screen throughout the transfer window, with their frequency increasing as the deadline approaches.
That gives managers more opportunities to respond to the market before the final day rather than waiting for a sudden rush of offers.
Sports Interactive has also detailed changes to transfer AI. Young players will place greater emphasis on playing time when considering certain moves, including agreements that treat a club as a stepping stone. Sell-on clauses will become more visible in scouting reports and influence how selling clubs value their players.
AI managers and Directors of Football are also receiving adjustments to how they consider experience and leadership when building squads.
More Visible Data and the Return of Heat Maps
Data is another part of the FM27 experience receiving attention.
Sports Interactive has confirmed improvements to the Data Hub and match statistics, alongside the return of heat maps.
More information is useful, but accessibility is just as important.
When your team is struggling, you want to identify a problem, investigate it and decide what to change. That process shouldn’t require searching through unrelated screens.
The new interface and data presentation could help, although we’ll have a better understanding once Sports Interactive reveals more of the match-day experience.
For now, these announcements tell us more about how information will be presented than how the underlying football simulation will behave.
A More Familiar Football Manager — But the Important Tests Are Still Ahead
There’s a clear theme running through both deep dives.
Sports Interactive wants FM27 to feel more familiar to long-time players while keeping the broader design introduced in FM26.
Some of the announced features are new approaches to existing systems. Others are familiar elements making a return.
That distinction matters. Bringing back a feature players missed is welcome, but it isn’t automatically evidence that the new game is better in every respect.
The interface needs to remain comfortable during a long save. Expanded news coverage needs enough variety to stay interesting. And changes to transfer AI need to produce believable decisions, not just better-looking screens.
The match-day and match-engine presentations will provide another important part of the picture.
Still, the first two deep dives have established what Sports Interactive is trying to improve: the connection between the decisions you make at your club and the football world unfolding around you.
If FM27 can make that world easier to navigate, more interesting to explore and better at remembering the stories created during a career, those changes could have a meaningful impact on the time we spend between matches.
For all confirmed announcements, release information and upcoming features, keep an eye on our Football Manager 27 guide.
PS: Images are credited to Football Manager Official Website
