Paying over 48 months

What are the advantages and disadvantages of paying over 48 months?

Advantage: You can buy a player you wouldn't normally be able to afford (If your budget is 1 million, you could buy a player worth four times that amount).

Disadvantage: You have a monthly payment now, which could cause your club financial strain in the future (not as much on the above deal, but if you finance a 75 million deal over 48 months, you're looking at paying 1.56 million a month for four years; if you can't sustain good form, you could go into the red).

I see. So you don't pay the transfer in 2 years time, you pay it month by month?

1/48th of the entire sum every month. 12/48th of the entire sum will be taken out of your transfer budget.

You can also finance only a portion of the fee. Say you want to make the whole transfer manageable, but don't have the entire cost up front. The guy costs 10 million, you have 5 million; you could pay 2.5 million up front, then spread the remaining 7.5 million over 48 months with 4.42 million left over and paying 160k per month (instead of 210k a month).

I think you may also be asked to pay a higher price the longer you take to pay. Completely made up examples, but a club might ask for £5m up front, or £5.5m over 12 months, £6m over 24 months, £6.5m over 36 months or £7m over 48 months.

What happens when you go deep into debt and can't pay it off? Administration?

This is a subject close to my heart.

I beleive this area needs some tweaks. Paying over 48 months makes this game far too easy for me because I can spend 4x my transfer budget and make unrealistic signings.

I got Coventry promoted to the prem via the play off's in season one and was rewarded with a 27million transfer fund. I spent 103 million on players and qualified for euro cup.

In season 3, I spent a similar amount and found myself with a young fantastic squad. My team was very sucessful at home an abroad. I made only a cople of small regen purchases in folowing seasons and did not use even 1/5th of my allocated transfer funds. I had NO adverse affects on finances because I was winning. Coventry were in profit season 3, 4 and 5 at which point I got bored and have not played the save since.

The above is just an example. I have many of them.

A lot of players have said I'll end up in admin but in 4 or 5 long term saves, that has not happened to me. This is because you can build a quality team that will challenge in Europe far too easily with little funds.

Basically, you can spend 4 times your transfer fund and this will have NO affect on the funds you are allocated in following seasons. Any future payments do NOT come out of your transfer kitty, this is the bit that is wrong IMO.

What should happen is this.....

Season one ... You have 10 mil to spend and you spend 40mil spread over 48 months. 10mil is taken directly form your transfer kitty.

Season two... The board give you 20 mil transfer kitty. 10 mil should be taken from this fund (after it has been announced) for future payments. This leaves you 10 mil to spend. You spend 40 mil.

Season three .. The board gives you 30 mil tranfer kitty. 20 mil should be deducted for future monthly payments, this leaves you 10 mil to spend.... And so on.

In this example, there is a direct impact on your future transfer kitty and if you dont manage it corectly and don't have a sucessful season, you're in trouble. This would make the game far more dificult/interesting IMHO.

One more thing. Spreading transfer payments over 48 months does NOT affect the price you pay for a player. This is wrong IMHO.

If player "X" is available for 10mil at the stat of the game, you can sign him with the payment over 48 months for 10mil or pay the 10mil upfront, it makes no diference to the AI.

This should be changed so that you have to pay a fixed percentage over the top of what a player is available for, for example, 25% more. This way, player "X" is now going to cost you 12.5mil over 48 months or 10mil upfront.

IMO that would not be a difficult piece of code and again, it would add to the realism/difficulty.

(NOTE; Paying over 36 months could add 20% to the fee, 24 months would add 15% and so on)