How do I get on players' favourites lists?

I’m on a bit of a mission to get myself on as many players’ favoured personnel lists as possible, with the intention that I’m more likely to sign a player form another club if he already likes me and that I’m likely to get better performance from my own players who like me.

However, while I know a couple of ways to get my name onto players’ lists, I’m still looking for other ways to get there. So far I know the following work for definite:

Player receives international call-up while playing for you

Sign an uncapped player, give him a run in the team and when he received that first international cap there’s a good chance he’ll give you credit for helping him achieve it and you’ll go on his list. However, this method limits it to players who aren’t already capped and even then it’s not always a guarantee if he’s already on his way to receiving a cap anyway.

Ask a player for a recommendation and follow up on it

Pretty self-explanatory really. Ask a player to recommend a new addition to the club and if you go ahead and take up his advice, he’ll praise you in the press for listening to his advice and you’ll end up on his favourites list. However, this is dependent on the player making a good recommendation and you bringing him into the club and there’s no way I’m going to sign a duff player just to get on a player’s list.

The following method used to work in the past but I’m not so sure it’s still the case in 09:

Criticise a player for poor performances

In 07 & 08 if you criticised a player publicly for poor performances then assuming he agreed with you, he would admit his performances were below par and you’d go on to his favourite list. However, I’ve yet to see this happen in 09 (and I’ve had to do it more times than I’d like), so perhaps it’s no longer a feature, but if it’s still happening then it would be good if people could say so.

The following method seems to work on some level, but I’m not entirely sure how:

Praise a player publicly

I’m not quite sure how this works, but a number of managers have praised my players publicly and they’ve gone straight to their favoured personnel list, whereas I’ve tried praising opposition players publicly and while they’ve accepted my praise, I haven’t appeared on their list.

I’m assuming it may be down to manager reputations, as I’ve praised Modric a number of times and got nowhere, while Ramos praised one of my players once and went straight on his list, while a number of my players now like Hughes and Redknapp, simply because they bigged them up in the press. Hopefully once my reputation grows I’ll be able to hold the same kind of influence as the bigger managers currently have.

Anyone got any more methods?

Play players regularly and praise their good work. If opponents players do well also praise them.

I've only ever experimented with trying to get my own players to favour me (because it definitely helps with motivation/morale). And the only way I've ever had consistent success is in publicly praising them when they've shown good form - if I do that twice, or three times and they respond favourably then they usually put me on their list.

If you want to look at it in more depth, something like FMRTE shows relationship scores out of 100 for each player in real-time, so you could assess the impact of praising/criticising opposition players or your own players that way. It may be that you're gaining a few points on their profile, but not enough to show up as a favoured personnel. I'd imagine that the positive effects of having players like you will work as a continuous variable rather than on a 'favoured/not favoured' basis anyway.

I find praising players to be risky since it’s hard to judge when a player will accept your praise. My main striker scored 8 goals in 6 games so I praised him and while he accepted it, his morale dropped and in his profile he had something like ‘doesn’t think he needs to do much to get praised by manager’.

I’m sure I read about determination being a factor so someone with high determination will need to have really good ratings to accept praise, but since my squad is now very determined it makes it hard to do this, as my striker had with 8 goals in 6 games and an average rating of 7.54 but still didn’t fully accept my praise and I find it harder to top that.

Hmm, interesting. I've only been actively trying it on my latest FM09 game which is with a Conference South/Conference team, so I probably don't have players with such good personality attributes. Clearly they're an insecure lot who can't get enough praise

A player not accepting praise with a 7.54 average is a bit strange though. It'd be interesting to see if any of his other hidden attributes (professionalism and ambition, perhaps?) are abnormally high or low. I've always assumed that whatever the formula is, it probably just takes the av. rating from the last 5 games in to account, but I suppose it might consider how easy/difficult those games were as well? It's probably the player's personality in that example, though.

Of course, the upside of lots of determined or professional players (even if they're stubbon enough to shun your praise) is that they're the ones who tend not to get complacent and are easy enough to motivate anyway!

With regards other players taking your praise and adding you to their favoured personnel, I'm guessing loyalty and ambition are probably important factors, but your manager rep and your club's rep (compared to his current club) and their happiness at the club are probably part of the equation, as well.

Does giving a senior player a role as a tutor affect your relationship with them, I wonder? Giving a player the captaincy, or vice-captaincy?

Yes, and yes, RT--.

I'd add to the list:

Praise a player for good performances: I have several players who have been putting in good performances, I've given them the "right" praise item - a matter of luck, as far as I can tell - and had them put me straight on their Favoured Personnel list after just one successful praise.

Establish a highly successful tutoring relationship: The ideal tutoring relationship seems to result in both the pupil and the mentor adding me to their Favoured Personnel list; the pupil also lists the mentor as his Favoured Personnel.

Give player the captaincy: My captain has me as his Favoured Personnel. He was not the player the game recommended to me, but I thought he could do the business, and all of the other players on the squad who like me supported him (as well as his friends), which left the "recommended" player out in the cold, sure he'd been maligned, but with not a soul supporting him. The only other Player Interaction I've had with him is getting him to learn a PPM, so I think its the captaincy that did it.

Using primarily those methods, I've got 7 of my stating XI who list me as Favoured Personnel, about 12 of my 22 rotational players (including my #2 keeper, but not my #1, somehow), and even a few of my youth players, ages 16, 17, and 18.

My favourite coup, however, was taking a young winger in on a season-long loan loan, during the last year of his contract. He was far better than my level of play, but I did my best - and got both myself and the club added to his Favourites lists. His contract expired, and sure enough he was willing to take a significant step down the pyramid to come star for me!

I'm not too sure about this one, but I have noticed it making a difference. You shouldn't believe me though, because it might just be me.

I have noticed that after making it clear that I want to sign a player, attending a couple of his matches and getting the "[Your name] is in the stands today to watch the game" line in the commentary helps with the development of a relationship with the player, especially when he has the Player Reaction of "Wants to impress [Your name] with his next performance."

Might just be me. Not sure.

My favourite coup, however, was taking a young winger in on a season-long loan loan, during the last year of his contract. He was far better than my level of play, but I did my best - and got both myself and the club added to his Favourites lists. His contract expired, and sure enough he was willing to take a significant step down the pyramid to come star for me!

In my experience, players who join your club on loan quite often end up adding the club to their favourites list. I've got about 3 or 4 players in my current Conference team who've spent time with me on loan before, and they all have the club down as their favourite.

It's obviously a useful mechanism for signing players who've enjoyed a loan spell at the club, and is realistic enough in that respect. But, given that it seems pretty hard to get players to favour the club even when they've played there for several years (and given the long-term positive motivation/morale effects of favouring the club), I think it might actually be a bit overpowered.

I've also noticed that a lot of youth players that come through at the team I'm managing have me on their favourite list from the day they appear, without me having to lift a finger

But yeah, other than that I'd pretty much agree with all of the above.

Being a well known and respected manager seems to do the trick as well. Having just won the league with Udinese, I moved to Roma and was immediately added to a number of players Favourred Personnel.

If you are an international manager, give a player his first cap. It'll be a permanent relationship thereafter. This is handy if your scouts have found the next wonderkid from that country.

I was Spain Manager and I conducted an extensive search of the Spanish under 19's and gave all the best youngsters their first cap, they all loved me after this and I was able to sign them to my Celtic team a lot easier.

i spent two weeks managing Kansas city. After winning the Dutch Cup & Eredivise with Ajax (not hard i know, but the year was 2019-ish). When i left to come back to England, i had 3 17 yo's who had me on the favourites list even though i actually had no contact with them during the ttime there.

Become international manager, every player i gave a debut to, they added me as personal fav.

Scout the players.

If it says that they'd be interested then praise them.

e.g. This player would be extremely interested in signing for you.

- Give this player praise and you'll get on the list.

e.g. This player has no intention of signing for you.

- This player will dismiss your praise and you won't get on the list.

I use praising this way;

I always look on the confidence list of my players. If a player is in there with about a 50-65 rating, I say its acceptable, when he's over that I am satisfied and hoping he can continue keeping this form. When its nearly full lets say over 85 percent, I praise him into heaven. Seems to work for me and most of my players have me as favoured personal.

Where do you find individual confidence lists? Had no idea they existed but it sounds like they could be useful.

Neither have I, Bigwig. I suspect he's using an editor or scout tool to view information which is not surfaced in the normal game UI.

Where do you find individual confidence lists? Had no idea they existed but it sounds like they could be useful.

Neither have I, Bigwig. I suspect he's using an editor or scout tool to view information which is not surfaced in the normal game UI.

It's in the normal confidence interface. Where you can see what the management thinks how your players do.

Team screen -> Confidence -> Players. Not sure how it's called in English since I play the Dutch version, hope it helps ^^

Ah!! The graphical bar in the Confidence screen, I get it. You mean "If the bar is at 50-65% of the screen..." and "If its past 85% of the screen..."

That makes sense to me, I misinterpreted your earlier post to mean that you were seeing a "Player's Confidence: 58%" somewhere, rather than an indicator of the Fan's confidence in the player.

My apologies, I didn't intend to give you any slight!

Ah!! The graphical bar in the Confidence screen, I get it. You mean "If the bar is at 50-65% of the screen..." and "If its past 85% of the screen..."

That makes sense to me, I misinterpreted your earlier post to mean that you were seeing a "Player's Confidence: 58%" somewhere, rather than an indicator of the Fan's confidence in the player.

My apologies, I didn't intend to give you any slight!

It's ok. I read my post it was a bit confusion indeed .

I played 4 successful seasons with Arsenal and made Fabregas my captain (i started on 9.1 with Gallas as captain)

Anyway thats how I got on Cesc's favoured personnel

Yeah i find making someone captain when they aren't reccomended does it. As well as capping an uncapped player (or if they score their first goal for you)

Another good one is to a)

Win a few competitions - player that stars in your team often adds you and club to his list.

Your player wins a European or world award, player will add you and club to the list.

Or often, a player can just join a club and fall in love with it. (Bojan and newcastle??)