AI Manager Update: More Control over Transfers, More Information, and an Even More Accessible Experience. Coming Soon!

[AI Manager]

AI Manager continues to grow. In this update, I have focused mainly on situations that, during a career, can make managing your team unclear or more complicated than necessary: offers hidden on the second page, loan costs that are difficult to interpret, overly generic news, and controls that are not always convenient to use with a screen reader.

The update will be available in the coming days, following thorough testing, but we are almost there: everything is ready.

Alongside the fixes, there are new features for the dashboard, youth academy, team customization, and conversations with players. Alex AI has also received several improvements, both in the information available to it and in how it understands the page from which it is opened.

Many of these changes come from your reports and suggestions while playing. Here is an overview of the new features, grouped by section.

A clearer and more useful dashboard

The Overview and News sections can be expanded and collapsed using the keyboard. The game remembers your choice, so when you return to the manager’s office, you find these areas as you left them. Collapsing Overview also hides the season objectives and player cards; collapsing News hides both the list and its controls.

Near the navigation area, you will find three shortcuts to Lineup and Squad, Transfer Centre, and Youth Academy. Keyboard shortcuts are also available: Alt+Shift+7, Alt+Shift+8, and Alt+Shift+9.

The dashboard also includes two sections dedicated to players:

• Completed deals: up to three recent moves, showing whether they are incoming or outgoing, transfers or loans, and the relevant amount. Promotions from the youth academy are included too.
• Your top players: three squad members selected according to their average ability, with their age, position, shirt number when assigned, and average match rating when available.

The two sections appear one below the other. Names are visually abbreviated to keep the cards compact, while screen readers announce the full name. Average ability also has a simpler presentation without losing its accessible description.

For completed deals, positive and negative amounts help distinguish income or savings from costs. This distinction does not depend on colour alone: screen reader users also receive information about the deal’s value.

More specific news and easier-to-find decisions

You can filter the news to show only items that still require a response. The Respond control takes you to the page where you need to act, and the pending-decision count now matches the filter’s contents.

News titles provide more information. Transfers, offer responses, injuries, recoveries, suspensions, and retirements identify the player concerned. Friendly invitations include the team, league, and nationality; news about matches, travel costs, and home-match income identifies the opponent.

The upcoming-match notice and the squad-availability report have been combined, making it easier to prepare for a match without looking for information in separate messages. Squad-development updates now show one player per line.

The button for marking all news as read remains available.

A more manageable transfer centre

Received and sent offers are grouped inside the collapsible Negotiations section. The talent search can also be expanded and collapsed, keeping its filters, results, and pagination together.

When you open the page, offers requiring a response appear first. If there are more than would normally fit on the first page, they are all shown there anyway: you no longer have to discover by chance that more decisions are hidden on the next page.

During your visit, however, rows do not move after each acceptance or rejection. They remain in place while the negotiation status changes. This lets you work through the list without repeatedly losing your position, particularly when using a screen reader.

Other improvements to the transfer market include:

• Fixed the handling of negotiations when a player rejects a contract, including free agents and cases where the club has already accepted the transfer offer.
• Renewals for your own players are correctly identified as contract renewals and display your club.
• The search includes a special-ability filter, allowing you to select a particular ability or any special ability.
• When a pending offer already exists, the search control lets you edit it rather than submit the same offer again.
• Successfully submitting a transfer or loan offer automatically adds the player to your watchlist without creating duplicates.

The Players on the Market and Players on Loan sections now have clearer names. The loan overview includes both players loaned out to other clubs and players borrowed by your team.

Loans: finally, you can see what you will pay

The loan-offer dialog shows the player’s annual salary and the annual contribution corresponding to your chosen percentage. Changing the percentage also changes the amount: you no longer have to make a decision without knowing the cost.

The offer tables show a simpler figure: the annual salary cost borne by your own club, taking the direction of the loan into account. This amount is separate from any penalty and should not be confused with the actual cost of only the months remaining in the season.

The way screen readers announce amounts has also been improved, preventing thousands separators from making figures difficult to understand.

Squad, contracts, and shirt numbers

On your team’s page, you can check market values and contract expiry dates, as well as directly manage players’ availability for transfer or loan and access contract renewals.

Market values use an abbreviated visual format, while screen readers receive the full amount. Expiry dates appear in day, month, and year format. Your squad’s sorting order is preserved when you return to the page.

Shirt-number management has also been refined. New signings, incoming loans, and returning players do not simply retain their previous club’s number: they receive an available number. If you manually assign a number already used in your squad, its previous holder is left without a number, ready for reassignment. This prevents duplicates.

The lineup table includes an assists column. If Play Match is disabled, the specific reason appears beside the button, such as an incomplete or invalid lineup.

More information beside player names

Links to player profiles use shared status indicators across the main tables: lineup, team details, transfers, youth academy, and individual leaderboards.

Alongside injury, suspension, special ability, and market availability, two important conditions are shown:

• An active loan, including the name of the player’s parent club: this is different from simply being available for a future loan.
• Being one yellow card away from suspension in the relevant upcoming competitive fixture.

This information is also available when screen readers announce the links.

Youth academy: clearer costs and a promotion history

Before promoting a youngster to the first team, you can see their expected salary. The valuation and salary calculations for new prospects have also been revised, using the standard player valuation as their reference. This change applies to newly generated prospects without recalculating players who already exist.

The youth academy page includes a First-Team Promotion History: a sortable table with 50 players per page, where you can follow players promoted from your academy even after they move to another club.

The history shows updated information such as current club, age, nationality, value, attributes, appearances, and average match rating when available. Promotions also appear among the dashboard’s completed moves.

Finances and team customization

The Accounting Ledger is now a collapsible section containing both the table and its pagination. You can browse the transaction history in groups of 20 rows without changing the seasonal or overall totals. Club operating costs are shown annually first and then monthly, consistently with the other financial information.

Editing club details is no longer limited to the team you manage: you can customize other clubs in your game too. Sporting management actions naturally remain restricted to your own team.

For each of the three club colours, there is a list of 16 named colours, a hexadecimal-code field, and a visual colour picker. The primary colour is required; for the second and third colours, you can select No Colour.

Your own team’s profile also provides a direct link to stadium expansion.

Live matches: first half, score, and penalties

During a live match, you can use the new Simulate Until Half-Time command, also available with Alt+H. The simulation stops at the interval, including stoppage time, allowing you to make changes before the second half.

Alt+R announces the current score, any penalty-shootout score, and the displayed list of goalscorers.

Penalty shootouts stop as soon as a team can no longer recover the deficit: unnecessary kicks are not taken just to complete all five attempts. Sudden-death penalties remain a separate part of the process.

Some VAR messages that could appear in English have been corrected, consistency between event and commentary timestamps has been checked, and browser audio activation has been made more robust.

The probability of new injuries has also been slightly reduced for the manager’s team, without changing existing injuries or the probabilities for computer-controlled teams.

Alex AI understands the game and your current page better

The main menu includes Learn to Play, which opens the same Alex AI assistant already accessible through the controls at the top of the pages. The introductory tutorial also mentions this option.

The guide used by the assistant has been expanded with information about game sections, the youth academy, player attributes, special abilities, positions, formations, tactics, competitions, and keyboard shortcuts.

Alex AI also receives information about the page from which it is opened. For example, opening the assistant on a team’s profile allows it to use that club’s context and honours history alongside the general guide.

If you have not configured an AI service, Alex AI is used by default. Existing settings are preserved. Error messages have also been improved to distinguish a truncated response from quota or service-availability issues.

More personal and better-informed conversations with players

In individual conversations, replies and waiting messages use the player’s name rather than Alex AI’s. Screen readers announce each completed response only once.

The player receives more context about their current team, teammates, league position, and recent results. When discussing a possible transfer, they can also consider the manager’s club, coaching ranking, and the sporting comparison with their own level.

The aim is to avoid conversations in which a highly ambitious talent promises to sign for any club. The chat remains an informal conversation: it does not replace a negotiation or guarantee acceptance of a contract.

You can also ask players which qualities they associate with their position, which areas of the pitch might suit them best, and whether they see their approach as more attacking or defensive. Replies use the available attributes without creating new selectable positions or individual statistics.

The interface language remains the default. On request, the conversation can switch to English or a language consistent with the player’s nationality. Instructions for replies in languages such as Japanese and Chinese have also been improved.

Accessibility, translations, and contact options

Many fixes concern everyday keyboard and screen reader use: contextual button names, decorative sorting indicators that are not announced, arrow-key navigation between tabs, and the removal of duplicate announcements for images, tooltips, and controls.

When a friendly invitation requires a response, the initial focus moves to Accept, and the buttons identify the team concerned. A short double beep signals other mandatory actions on the relevant pages. If the browser suspends automatic audio, the alert can play upon the first interaction.

Captain and set-piece-taker selection in Brazilian Portuguese has been fixed, along with some difficulties saving settings. Translation work covers all eight available languages, and checks have been added to prevent new labels from being lost during catalogue updates.

Community, donation, reporting, and email-contact links have been made consistent. The Contact Us by Email form requires a free-text subject of up to 100 characters, while reports retain their category selector. Both require the sender’s email address so we can reply.

The Create a New Game option explains that each user can have only one active game and that starting another will delete the current one.

Let’s keep building AI Manager together

For me, improving AI Manager also means listening to the people who use it and addressing the details that make a difference while playing. A cost that finally makes sense, a more specific news item, or a button announced correctly can make the game much more enjoyable.

Thank you to everyone who continues to try new features, report problems, and suggest ideas. If you would like to support development, you will also find a donation link within the game.

You can play AI Manager and meet other managers in the official Discord community.

See you on the pitch!