Buy now pay later - Is it cheating?

Hi,

Sorry if there is a thread like this, had a quick search and couldn't find anything. But if there is, sorry!!

As I am sure most of you are aware, it is quite easy to extend your transfer budget if you try to sign players by only paying monthly installments. For example, playing as Aston Villa, with only a £2.5 million transfer budget one would think I'd be limited in who I can buy. I sold a few players and gained a £20 million transfer budget. However, with that I was able to buy Jovetic, Dzeko, Milevskyi, Srna, Rodwell, Defour and Hazard. Most of these players require at least a bid worth £15 million or more. Either way, I "shouldn't" be able to buy all of them. Yet, here they all are in my team at the start of the season.

Now, I believe paying something like 50% or more and then the rest in monthly installments isn't "cheating", it does mirror a bit of the real life football world (At least I tell myself that). For example, I'd feel ok buying for able Srna with £8 million up front and the rest in installments. But buying superstars like Dzeko, Ribery, Neymar with £0 upfront? Really? Would that ever happen in the real world?

So am I just being overally ethical about it or do you others feel the same? If it's implanted in the game and not fixed after all these patches, it can't be a bug. So if it's part of how the game is played, why do I feel like I am cheating if it do it?

I'm also playing with Villa, made some pretty steep signings, get another huge transfer budget the next season, and for the next three seasons after that. Now I'm in 2015 and have hardly signed a soul in 2 years because, even though I got a £54m transfer budget, I'm £52m in the red, and it's rising month by month, naturally paying off the monthly installments from the last god knows how many years. So in that respect, it's not really cheating because it comes back to bite you on the ass eventually, but it isn't the best thing to have done. Even winning championships isn't pulling me out of the woods yet, just hope I don't go bankrupt, the game tells me my finances are 'okay' - good enough for me, for now!

Any club can offer to pay in monthly instalments but after a while you will have to pay that back and unless you are successful, you will be in some trouble. Therefore I do think its realistic. Myself I don't like to gamble with the clubs finances, just pay with what I have.

Isn't this more of a General Discussion thread

Any club can offer to pay in monthly instalments but after a while you will have to pay that back and unless you are successful, you will be in some trouble. Therefore I do think its realistic. Myself I don't like to gamble with the clubs finances, just pay with what I have.

This, you have to pay the money back anyway so wouldn't consider it cheating. Plus depending on the club you are, you'll find yourself up ***** creek 3-4 years down the line if you constantly use it.

In saying that I spent a mere £197M in my first season at Celtic, all over 48 months. Brought in £119M from selling players though so shouldn't find myself in trouble any time soon.

Unless there's a time in the season when an outstanding opportunity arises when i can only afford the player if i pay over a certain amount of months, i just pay the money upfront.

There's a reason why the game works out what the board give you, it's probably a good idea to follow it.

of course it isnt cheating...

most deals that go through these days are installments irl.... we just dont hear about it until something goes wrong..

a la crouch / keane etc... clubs end up in big trouble when they pay for players in installments and then down the line cant pay..

the same can be said in fm ...

no difference

of course it isnt cheating...

most deals that go through these days are installments irl.... we just dont hear about it until something goes wrong..

a la crouch / keane etc... clubs end up in big trouble when they pay for players in installments and then down the line cant pay..

the same can be said in fm ...

no difference

I completely agree, but i just think (not wanting to seem like some financial genius or whatever) that it's just plain stupid people thinking they've somehow outwitted the game or found a cheat by potentially putting their team out of business. Paying over 48 months, adjusting your budget as much as you can, it's just stupid.

If the club allows it to happen, it's not cheating and besides, you're only screwing yourself over in the long run.

Doesn't it effect your next years budget aswell? So you're basically borrowing off next years budget. I guess it could be classed as cheating for players who do the old play two seasons, quit, start a new game, which quiet a few people I know do. Because obviously you're signing lots of players in the short term and wont have to deal with the long term financial consequences. But if you're at least planning to carry on playing I don't see a problem it is your problem to sort it out years down line.

never use this id rather pay full amount upfront

I've used this when i know i had the money in the balance, like 60m with Liverpool 2nd season. I used this on 4 players all of those being 5-13m buys, and i am doing well atm. I only use this when i know the money being paid over the months is not too big(such as signing someone for 20m (over 48 months) and if the price is right for a start.

I don't count it as cheating as this is done in real life aswell? Soo..

Doesn't it effect your next years budget aswell? So you're basically borrowing off next years budget. I guess it could be classed as cheating for players who do the old play two seasons, quit, start a new game, which quiet a few people I know do. Because obviously you're signing lots of players in the short term and wont have to deal with the long term financial consequences. But if you're at least planning to carry on playing I don't see a problem it is your problem to sort it out years down line.

It didn't affect my budget for the following year, was still getting £40m-£60m budgets, every season after the first (with Villa). I was stupid in the first three years though making huge signings left right and centre, which is why I'm probably going to end up bankrupting the club

of course it isnt cheating...

most deals that go through these days are installments irl.... we just dont hear about it until something goes wrong..

a la crouch / keane etc... clubs end up in big trouble when they pay for players in installments and then down the line cant pay..

the same can be said in fm ...

no difference

This definately.

The only transfer I can think of that was not in installments recently was Ronaldo to Madrid.

Absolutely cheating. Anybody doing this should be banned! It's even worse than those who create managers in their own game just so they can sell players for mega bucks and get cheap bids accepted.

Absolutely cheating. Anybody doing this should be banned! It's even worse than those who create managers in their own game just so they can sell players for mega bucks and get cheap bids accepted.

Banned from what?

Banned from what?

The forums. He was joking though.

The forums. He was joking though.

Oh right ha. Poor joke Snoop

Oh right ha. Poor joke Snoop

Only poor because you didn't get it.

Only poor because you didn't get it.

Alas! I've been found out! My sense of humour fails me yet again!

IRL spurs bought modric with £0 up front and instalments over 4 years,everton done the same with fellaini i thinks.

Absolutely cheating. Anybody doing this should be banned! It's even worse than those who create managers in their own game just so they can sell players for mega bucks and get cheap bids accepted.

Sarcasm i hope?

Do you think Madrid paid 80M or what ever it was in a one sum to Man Utd, What ever it was for Kaka in one sum? Most deals over 10M are done like this unless its Chelsea or Man City.

Paying over 48months or less is the Manager taking a gamble.

Someone like Everton/Villa/Spurs signing big players over 48months and taking the gamble that those players are whats needed to push on a couple of places and get Champions League football, which would bring in at least £25m that season and attract better players next season. A newly promoted club, spending above their means hoping to attract the talent to keep them in the division.

Theres absolutely nothing wrong with signing players over 48months from a financial viewpoint. Some gamers are just insecure about seeing a negative monthly loss, which is often made up at the end/start of the season with Prize Money, TV Money and Season Tickets. As long as you can sustain the transfers, then it's a perfectly acceptable sollution.

As an example: i won the League with Everton in the second season, but only managed a transfer budget of £23m. Knowing that i could make double that with Champions League revenue and needing to consolidate my League position, i paid out £30m on 2 key players and a couple of regens.

its the only option and a viable one for teams like portsmouth who want to improve their squad to get some financial security....

its all about balance though

isn't this the way Leeds Utd got themselves into trouble? or quite similar...

paying big fees for players but dependant on champions league money coming in, year after year

They missed out for 2 years and it soon caught up with them.

Look where they are now ....dirty, dirty.............

Assuming the game is still calculating the next years budgets taking the 48 months into consideration (which i'd hope it was) then it's certainly not a cheat and for some clubs it's really the only way to operate.

Some very valid points from several of you. I didn't know that teams actually did pay either 0 upfront or close to 0 upfront in real life. And I completely forgot that doing so would hamper my financial gains in the years to come (doh!). And as I am planning to at least manage Villa until 2015 I can see overspending now is going to come back and bite me.

Appreciate all the quick replies!

I did this myself one season with Villa signing a fair few expensive players over a long time, got myself about £90 million in debt. Luckily, I won the treble 2 years running, and Randy was nice enough to pump some extra cash in, if he hadn't, we would have been in some serious trouble.

Do you think Madrid paid 80M or what ever it was in a one sum to Man Utd, What ever it was for Kaka in one sum?

They did actually

Very few transfers are upfront, just on the front of it for some Stoke transfers in the last couple of seasons:

James Beatties £3.5m move was some monthly installments as well as money depending on Stoke staying up.

Dave Kitsons £5.5m move was something like £2m upfront, some in monthly installments and the rest after like 10 goals I think. So Reading have no hope of seeing a portion of that transfer money.

Ryan Shawcross moved to Stoke for about £1.2m and there is several more increments to be paid based on appearances.

The reality is, for many clubs aside from the top few especially at the start of the season the funds aren't in place for a vast array of cash upfront deals. The books have to be balanced; and clubs get their TV money in monthly installments so for many clubs it's a matter of juggling transfer outgoings and such to coincide with the payments of this.

Some clubs, like Bolton/Portsmouth/Hull seem to be more reliant on the monthly income to balance the wages, with a small amount for transfers. Clubs like Stoke/Fulham a few years back and now Birmingham have relatively wealthy owners, whilst there isn't an abundance, irl it means the wages don't really have to be heavily subsidised by the TV money so there is more money to play with when spending.

The worst club possible to take up monthly installments with in my opinion is liverpool, crippling debts already if you add excessive outgoings to that then odds are even with success you'll go into administration and the 9 point deficit will probably cost you a CL place and ruin the club financially.

No its not cheating at all, as this is the way the majority of transfers are done in real life anyway unless they are small single million pound transfers

You just need to restrict yourself from going nuts and putting your club in financial trouble

Yeah, Ronaldo's was one of the few deals thats was £80m in one go, Man Utd need the interest on it

Isn't this more of a General Discussion thread

Right.

they need more than the interest

no its not cheating.. network game with my mate, he was wigan, spent 60m with a 20m budget in the 2nd year. end of the 2nd year he was docked 9 points and 'bankrupt'.

was brilliant!!

No its not cheating. Although if you use it you need to bear in mind that it will hurt in the future and the fact its very much based on success.

I thought if you had a limit of £20m, if you offered say £10m upfront with £30m in installments, the transfer wouldn't go though because its over your £20million limit, no?

Very few transfers are upfront, just on the front of it for some Stoke transfers in the last couple of seasons:

James Beatties £3.5m move was some monthly installments as well as money depending on Stoke staying up.

Dave Kitsons £5.5m move was something like £2m upfront, some in monthly installments and the rest after like 10 goals I think. So Reading have no hope of seeing a portion of that transfer money.

Ryan Shawcross moved to Stoke for about £1.2m and there is several more increments to be paid based on appearances.

Sebastian Bassong is another one. That bloke farts and I have to pay Newcastle another 250K.

I thought if you had a limit of £20m, if you offered say £10m upfront with £30m in installments, the transfer wouldn't go though because its over your £20million limit, no?

I think the game will let you spend your budget for every year the payments are spread across. For example, if your budget was £10m you could pay £40m spread over 48 months.

I thought if you had a limit of £20m, if you offered say £10m upfront with £30m in installments, the transfer wouldn't go though because its over your £20million limit, no?

It depends.

If you paid £10 mill up front with £30 mill over 4 years, then you would use your whole budget for that season. Your £10 mill up front plus a quarter of that £30 mill would be taken out of the first years budget. So £10 mill + £7.5mill out of your first years budget, then the remaining would be paid at a rate of £7.5 mill for the next 3 years straight out of your budget.

At a stretch, you could still do it as £10 mill then £30 mill over 3 years. It would mean the 1st year you'd pay £10 mill up front and the 1st £10 mill installment. The the next 2 seasons you would pay £10 mill straight out of your transfer budget.

its nt cheating, if u want a top team quickly then its ok 2 do it. but u have to remember this game isnt just about playing football, theres many other things including managing finances.

i may nt win the league or a competition every season but im never far away and i make a profit in 90% of seasons i play. if your going to do it, u must calculate what u r going to pay over the next few years and how your going to finance it. as im prudent IRL i find this side of things quite easy to control.

It's not cheating, risky though, depending on the club you manage.

I started a new game and spent 109 million in the first pre season with Arsenal (had no idea i spent so much) so im looking to make sure all goes well from now on. Luckily i have a good 40 million due if loan to buys go through.

Nope its not cheating, you will eventually pay it all in full. If anything it is a more risky way to go, because if you have poor finances in the future you could end up in some debt.

It's like buying something from a catalogue, you get the item before you have paid for it.

But you still have to pay for it, wether it be weekly/monthly. It still as to get paid for in the end.

Nope its not cheating, you will eventually pay it all in full. If anything it is a more risky way to go, because if you have poor finances in the future you could end up in some debt.

It's like buying something from a catalogue, you get the item before you have paid for it.

But you still have to pay for it, wether it be weekly/monthly. It still as to get paid for in the end.

And if you don't, you end up having to sell other assets to cover the losses amounted during that period!

That's the real potential consequence, you'll be forced to sell your team to cover the debt if administration looms. Could be a Leeds Utd in the making.

Not cheating, but I don't do it. It takes the fun out of the game if you can build your dream team before the end of the first transfer window.

I agree with the OP that the board allow you to spend unrealistically high sums of money when you spread payments over 48 months. Those who say there is nothing wrong with this are deluding themselves.

In real life, Everton wouldn't let David Moyes spend £100m in a single season just because he spread it over 48 months and shifted some money from his wage budget. The board just wouldn't allow the manager to take such a huge gamble with the club's future.

What makes this even worse is that there is no actual risk to doing this in the game. The board will often just keep pumping in money or taking out loans until you have won the CL multiple times and become one of the world's richest clubs.

If you spend the money on youngsters you can even make massive profits and start the whole process again. The board of a real football club would never allow a manager to blow four times his transfer budget on 16 year-olds because he assures them that they have loads of potential.

Even if worst comes to worst and you end up in receivership, this is basically just a cheat that allows you to reduce your wage bill to a pittance, reconsolidate the debt, and then embark on another spending spree.

If you think this is realistic, you need to stop playing FM and take a look at the real world.

I agree with the OP that the board allow you to spend unrealistically high sums of money when you spread payments over 48 months. Those who say there is nothing wrong with this are deluding themselves.

In real life, Everton wouldn't let David Moyes spend £100m in a single season just because he spread it over 48 months and shifted some money from his wage budget. The board just wouldn't allow the manager to take such a huge gamble with the club's future.

....

If you think this is realistic, you need to stop playing FM and take a look at the real world.

Okay, let's take a look at the real world - newspaper headline today:

Lens chief wants Pompey expelled from league

Portsmouth should be kicked out of the Premier League because of their financial plight, according to Lens president Gervais Martel. The French chief is owed money for the transfers of Nadir Belhadj and Aruna Dindane and says he feels ''cheated''.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=719532&sec=england&cc=4716

The point is that this is exactly the kind of financial mis-management that Portsmouth have found themselves in. Everton wouldn't be so stupid, but at Pompey the previous regime DID sanction Redknapp to buy players the club couldn't afford on these long-term installments and 'play now pay later' deals. It's the chairmen who are deluding themselves, not SI for including it in the game.

@phnompenhandy

I am not complaining about the fact that payments can be spread over 48 months, but the fact that this allows you to spend four times your transfer budget.

Portsmouth aren't in financial trouble because of large transfer fees, but because of the high wage bill they've had over the last few seasons. Dindane and Belhadj were signed after Portsmouth got themselves into trouble and decided to offload all their high earners and replace them with new players on lower wages.

Not even a club as badly run as Portsmouth would tolerate the sort of financial mismanagement that managers can routinely get away with in FM.

I think it would be best if SI toned this down, no manager would get a budget of 30 mil and be allowed to spend 150 million if its spread over 4 years, would they?

I think it would be best if SI toned this down, no manager would get a budget of 30 mil and be allowed to spend 150 million if its spread over 4 years, would they?

Thing is, doing this does have implications in the game. Generally i get around £60 million transfer budget per season. Now before i started getting this amount, i found signing players of a higher quality harder, thus making it harder to improve my team. So in the early days when i was getting £10 million budgets, i spread the payments for some top drawer players over 4 years. This costs me an extra £25 million per season straight out of my budget which then limits me to £35 million transfer budget remaining.

I bought young players that will last me them 4 years so while im paying them off i dont really have to improve majorly and just pick up the most talented young players on the cheap every so often. This means at the end of the 4 year plan i have an excellent squad that owes no money to anyone making my financial situation a lot stronger.

Spreading payments is only a problem if you keep doing it year after year or if your success doesn't match your outlay. As i mentioned above though, if used corrctly, the gamble can pay off.