A few small ideas

These ideas aren't needed or even necessarily wanted, but nonetheless.

I think the social side of the game could do with improving. With maybe a general chat etc.

If a player makes so many appearances for your club, you can name a stand after them and if you or anyone views your stadium, they can click on the stand and it'll show the stats of that one player for their career. (Not sure If this is possible, but I can't see why not).

Player traits/distinctions. Minor ones. Such as some players can be played in more than one position without a penalty to stats, maybe a players mood will regress slower, maybe there's one where injuries don't last as long. These should be rare and completely random upon player generation as well as being very minor in terms of impact.

Removal of some leagues. Was amazing when more got added, but the game isn't as populated now. Streamline the game. (Opinion, the majority might be fine with current system)

A small overhaul to the look of the game. I tried to get a friend to play and he couldn't get into it because the game felt somewhat dated, I can see that. It hasn't changed much in the 10 years I've played.

Sharing incentives. Encourage people to share the game around, if anyone signs up, there's a mutual small bonus of tickes or a premium trial (this could he abused, so maybe isn't possible).

If anyone can think of any similar miscellaneous ideas, it would he nice to talk about them.

I've had a few ideas of my own bouncing in my head the last few days, figure as this thread isn't too old might as well open it for discussion instead of starting a whole new thread.

Firstly with regards to the ideas you put forward:

General chat sounds fun in theory but I'm not sure how active the English userbase is, the forums are pretty silent these days. Perhaps if the chat came with some kind of daily prompts it might build a little bit more engagement

I really like the idea of individual achievements being recognised, I used to maintain a "most appearances and most goals" list but that was a manual task and incredibly tedious to maintain. Granted not everyone is here for the personal story that their team creates but I used to love that part of the game before I had full time work to contend with instead.

The personalised traits thing sounds interesting too, it might overcomplicate things but it's the sort of idea that could definitely be iterated upon. Even outside of the match engine perhaps things like "loyalist" where a player has a small chance of a much higher training after a certain amount of time at the same club

I quite like that there are so many leagues to choose from, though I think there are too many lower divisions that are filled with 10+ bots and returning players who get minimal vifa points when they're placed into it. Not sure what the best fix would be but I think reducing the leagues would look like a negative change even if it's to bring the general population together (lower division rewards would have to be scaled up significantly if teams previously in Div4 sudden find themselves in Div6)

I do think the UI is dated but there's a part of me that loves that nostalgia. I wouldn't be opposed to it changing, I just don't have any strong opinions on how it should be modernised

Signup incentives I think is a difficult one to control, probably the best way to control it would be to have a maximum number of rewards a club can get and tying some of the rewards to clubs remaining active. Once you've maxed out those rewards you get some kind of recognition on your club profile but you can't get infinite rewards for a single club.

And now my ideas:

Training schedule - Could put this behind pro but the ability to set a rotating weekly schedule for exercises would take away some of the tedium of doing the same edits to training on repeat. If you want to do specifically targeted training you could have separate exercises for them

Clubless player training - When a player isn't at a club it might be interesting to have players grow a little on their own, whether just a simulated low ground train or a small stat increase once a week - Would slightly increase the number of viable players on the market. I have players in my youth squad that could have been a lot more usable if they'd had a bit of passive stat growth on the side

Rivalries - This is purely a self indulgent idea but I love the idea of being able to designate a couple of clubs as your rivals, and perhaps on matchdays against your rival clubs more fans come to watch. Perhaps you get to designate one from any league and then the game automatically assigns you one within your league per season

Staff Improvements - If I have a trainer with 18 or 19 stats I think it would be pretty cool to be able to pay for him to undertake a certification or course that would grow one one of his stats to 20. I understand 20x20 trainers can't just be given out endlessly but it would be nice if there was some way to improve a trainer, even if it took say 14 days for the stat to upgrade.

Specific Position Youths - Just being able to choose the specific position of one youth player per season would be amazing. I'm currently building towards a fully homegrown challenge and the biggest difficulty I have is generating a specific position. Though in reality it will just lead to a flood of DC's on the market

(A lot of ideas for one thread but much like yourself I think it's better to aggregate ideas rather than spamming 5 new topics for my ideas)

Streamlining of the leagues without doubt makes sense. Take out the bottom divisions, moving real teams up to replace bots. Sure newbies may struggle at first but they will soon adapt to the rigours of increased competitiveness. Id rather go in at a competitive div4/5 than a pointless div 6 walkover
Also limits to country entry may be needed. Eg you select England but only way to accommodate your request is to create league with bots. Then default you to another country where there is bots to replace instead