Young players and their wage demands.

Is this realistic, I'm not gonna name the player but I'm not sure if there are any real life situations that this would happen to this extent.

There was a player I wanted to buy for Arsenal to use as a back up and a prospect for the future.

He was currently on a rotation contract on about £250p/w at his club. I had a bid accepted and for his move to Arsenal it came up as default in the contract as Key Player and he wanted £62,000p/w and about £4000 in goal bonus and appearance fee.

You would expect maybe 10k or even 20k but I think it's a bit much to demand that from where he was coming from. You would think being given the chance to play for Arsenal would be good enough and he would want to work for his first team status.

yeah this is a problem on the game, and i would think not realistic compared to real life. In my experience, the amount of wages a player asks for is influenced by a few factors:

- how much he really wants to join your club. This could be judged by whether Arsenal is listed in his favourite clubs or not. It could also be judged by praising him in the media and seeing how he responds. If he is 'ecstatic' or similar, then he is porbably really keen and likely to accept lower wages; but if he responds in a less interested way then he might not be as keen on a move as you think he should be (this in turn could be effected by him having a lowish ambition attribute, and/or a high loyalty attribute). Check your scout reports too to see how likely he is to want to come to Arsenal.

- if a number of other good clubs are also interested in him, then this is likely to push up what he is askign for (especially if any of the other interested clubs are on his favoured clubs list)

- it could also be related to how much you are paying other players of similar age or ability/squad status. If other young rotation players are on good deals, this might be an influencing factor in his demands

- thirdly, it seems to be pretty accepted knowledge on here that if you have a large amount of un-allocated wages in your wage budget, then players are likely to demand more wages. Basically they see that the club is rolling in it, and want a larger slice of the pie! You can try adjusting your budgets (put more money into the transfer budget so there is less left in the wage budget). This has worked for me before, and seems to be commonly used by others as well.

- finally, there does seem to be a certain amonut of randomness to what players asked for. You could try to negotiate the player down to an amount that is more to your liking. Sometimes i have been able to negotiate down considerably (ie in your example, down to about 10K per week/rotation) and the player has accepted, other times they seem firm on what they are asking and won't budge. You could save before you offer and just go through the process and see if you can get him down to a reasonble agreement

the last thing to keep in mind is that if you are playing as the mighty Arsenal (no guesses for why i support!) and doing well, then money should be rolling in. If this youngster is someone you see as a likely first teamer in the near future, then you might decide its worth paying him a bit more than you ideally want to, just to make sure you don't lose out on him. If this is teh case, then i would make the length of the contract as long as you can so that he is less likely to ask for further improvements in teh near future.

Apols for the long post, but i hope some of it is of some use to you!

good luck

what club was the player moving from?? That seems to be a hell of a request for a club like Arsenal, especially if he's only on a "rotation" contract with a lesser club (judging by his wages, a MUCH lesser club)

Sounds like he "has no interest in joining your club". I never had a prospect that is interested in joining ask for wages that high, only already very good players.

I would not give him more than £5,000 per week as at the moment he is really a nobody.

Two words: Daniel Sturridge