EA FC 27 Career Mode Review — Frustrating Career Mode

I’ve put a pretty serious amount of time into EA FC 27 Career Mode now, and honestly, I’m conflicted.

On the pitch, when the game works, FC 27 can be fantastic. I’ve had some of the most enjoyable Career Mode matches I’ve played in years. The gameplay can feel genuinely challenging, especially on Ultimate, and once I adjusted the sliders, I found a much better balance where players still make mistakes based on their attributes but aren’t constantly fighting the controls. The dribbling, passing and first touches can feel much more natural than they did initially.

But Career Mode itself has a lot of systems that make me question whether EA actually play-tested a long-term save.

My biggest issue right now is the transfer system.

I had a January window where I negotiated several transfers. Five players were involved, with roughly £69m committed. Only one actually joined immediately. The others showed that they were joining when the transfer window opened, while the money was already being deducted from my available budget.

That’s incredibly frustrating because it effectively removes money from your budget while giving you no usable players during the window when you actually need them.

In previous FIFA/FC games, future-window transfers generally made sense because the money wasn’t effectively locked away from you in the same way. Here, it feels like I’m being punished for planning ahead.

And this isn’t happening in a rebuild where I’m signing 15 players. I’m managing a club that has gone from promotion → Premier League 5th → FA Cup winner → European football, and I’m trying to build the squad logically for a title challenge. I need to be able to trust the transfer system.

Scouting and recruitment is another major problem.

I’ve found the scouting system incredibly slow and, more importantly, extremely buggy.

I spent roughly an hour going through scouting reports trying to find the right targets — players who fit what I needed, had the right attributes, and, most importantly, actually showed enough interest in joining my club.

That’s already a ridiculous amount of time to spend just trying to identify realistic transfer targets.

But then you get to the actual transfer stage and it gets even worse.

Even after spending all that time finding players who are interested and negotiating deals, the game can apparently take your money and then not actually give you the players.

So what exactly was the point of the scouting system?

I’m spending an hour digging through buggy scouting reports to find players with the right attributes and the right interest level, specifically so I can make realistic transfers — and then the transfer system turns around and says, essentially, “thanks for the money, we’ll let you know when your players actually exist.”

That makes the entire recruitment process feel completely disconnected.

And I’m not talking about trying to sign Mbappé or Bellingham.

I’m looking for young CBs, fullbacks, midfielders and promising squad players, and somehow Arsenal, Manchester United, Aston Villa, etc. constantly seem to swoop in and buy the players I’m targeting.

I’m trying to build a realistic squad, and the game makes every step of doing that unnecessarily difficult.

It makes recruitment feel less like squad building and more like fighting the game’s transfer algorithm.

Player sales also need serious work.

Career Mode constantly creates situations where you have too many players, but actually getting rid of them can be ridiculously difficult.

You can have players who aren’t part of your plans, but finding realistic buyers and actually moving them on feels unnecessarily complicated.

This creates a domino effect:

Can’t sell players → squad gets bloated → can’t register/manage squad properly → have to reject new players → transfer budget gets tied up → recruitment becomes a nightmare.

A long-term Career Mode shouldn’t feel like you’re fighting the menus more than you’re managing the football club.

Financials are also bizarre.

This one really bothers me.

You can have a successful season, qualify for Europe, win trophies and generate a huge amount of revenue, but the money you actually receive as transfer budget doesn’t always feel remotely proportional to the success you’ve achieved.

I had a season where the club generated a huge amount of league-related income, yet my actual transfer budget didn’t reflect that in a way that felt logical.

If I’m managing a club that massively overachieved, won a major domestic trophy and qualified for Europe, the financial progression should reflect that.

Squad development is another issue.

The game has all these systems designed around long-term squad building, but the AI transfer market can completely undermine it.

You find a young player.

You scout him.

You plan to sign him.

Another club buys him.

You find another player.

Same thing happens.

Eventually you stop feeling like a manager building a squad and start feeling like you’re trying to exploit whatever players the game hasn’t already taken.

And then there’s gameplay.

This is probably the most complicated part of my review because I actually really like the gameplay when it works.

But there are moments where the game feels like it is artificially fighting you.

Players can feel extremely heavy or “stuck.”

First touches can sometimes feel completely disconnected from what you’re trying to do.

Player switching can be inconsistent.

There are situations where you clearly press a button and the game either delays the action or seems to ignore it.

On Ultimate, I don’t want the game to make my players artificially incompetent.

I want the AI to beat me because it played better football.

There’s a huge difference between:

“That was a brilliant attack from the AI.”

and

“My player literally wouldn’t respond to what I pressed.”

The first is challenging.

The second is frustrating.

Thankfully, after adjusting sliders, I’ve found the gameplay much more enjoyable, and I haven’t wanted to keep messing with them. So I know there’s a genuinely good football game underneath all of this.

The frustrating part is that Career Mode has so much potential.

I’ve actually had an incredible save.

I took Coventry City into the Premier League.

First season:

• Finished 5th
• Won the FA Cup
• Qualified for Europe

Second season:

• Competing for the Premier League title
• Finished top of the Europa League league phase
• Still in the Europa knockout stages
• Reached the FA Cup semifinal
• Built a squad with actual depth and young players

That’s exactly what Career Mode is supposed to be.

I’ve had matches that felt like absolute cinema.

I’ve had huge comebacks, title races, European nights, cup finals, academy players scoring, backup players becoming heroes, etc.

That’s why the broken systems are so frustrating.

I’m invested in the save.

I WANT to keep playing it.

But when I have to spend more time worrying about whether my £70m worth of transfers are actually going to show up than worrying about my next opponent, something is wrong.

Overall

Gameplay: 8/10 when it works
Career Mode concept: 9/10
Career Mode systems: 4/10
Transfers/recruitment: 3/10
Scouting: 3/10
Financial progression: 4/10
Long-term squad management: 4/10

Overall: 5/10(im being generous)

There is a genuinely great Career Mode buried underneath FC 27.

But EA needs to stop treating Career Mode like a collection of separate features and start making the systems actually work together.

Transfers, scouting, finances, squad registration, player development, AI recruitment and club progression all need to function as one ecosystem.

Right now, too often, they don’t.

And that’s a shame because when FC 27 actually lets you manage your club and play football without fighting the game itself, it’s **bleep** brilliant.