I'd like to be able to whisper to the ears of my bad performing players


no, seriously...

The team management part of the game is not bad. Following your players, making sure you always have a competitive team...
Apart from the negotiation feature. Since Nordeus decided to fully control the offer side of the players market, it feels also less social. Making the negotiations affordable (why the exorbitant 10-tokens commission?) would bring something back.
The building management part sucks a bit. Could be easily taken out or simplified.
And indeed, playing against abandoned teams is not interesting.

Lastly, it'd be great to feel a bit more in control
- be clear, concrete and transparent about what skills and SA do (and don't). Give the managers the way of building their own training & team strategy, instead of having to guess and speculate. On the long run, the lack of public knowledge can only feed conspiracy theories and trolling complaints.

- during the games, give more the impression that the manager's actions - formation, orders etc- have an impact.
The statistics are rough and feel somewhat made up. How many offsides did my team cause? how many attacks on the left/right/center? activity per player (passes, shots, tackles etc)? # of shots from within the rectangle, long shots... how many counter attacks? I'm sure all of this can be improved.