If we were to compare the interfaces of Football Manager and games from the series of Championship Manager 4, not even mentioning the famous CM 3, since it was something from a completely different century, we would see the improvement with a bare eye. FM has not lost the clarity, which has always been one of its strong sides, but gained on, let's call it, freshness. It would be quite hard right now to mistake the game with Excel, and this kind of comparisons have been popping up here and there from all the gamers who are not fans of Football Manager.
But even between the fans of the series, there are people who find the interface a bit boring. Too much text, too little graphics - this seems to be the most common complaint about it, especially when seeing the product of EA Sports - FIFA Manager - which does not seem to be having this kind of issues.
What can be done about it? One of the users of the SI Forum - StanPetrov - came up with a very interesting idea and since it is all about graphics, he did not stop by explaining everything with words, but instead he laid it all out visually for us and the SI people. He added a bit of FIFA Manager's "sweetness" to Football Manager - is it better? You tell us: Player's Screen #1, Player's Screen #2, Matchflow, Overview, League Table, Tactics.
One might fine it pretty, other not, but it is definitely interesting, and was found so also by Ter, who visited StanPetrov's topic and greeted all the ideas warmly, and we all know that it is Ter who is mainly responsible for how FM looks visually. Of course, he did not make any promises about any of the ideas being implemented in the next versions, however assured us that the graphical side will not be forgotten when working on Football Manager 2008. Hurray?!