The Unrealistic Freindies Loophole

Noticed this on the last few releases. To boost your cashflow in the lower leagues you can easily make a quick buck by offering home freindlies the top teams. Not a problem if it's just one or two sellouts but you'll find that you'll only get turned down if they have another match clashing or if you've already got a freindly arranged with that team.

As long as there are plently of unique top sides to choose from, you can have sell outs home crowds every other day pre-season and sacrific your worst players to avoid injury/suspension.

It would be more realistic if Man Utd, Chelsea etc came back after your friendly offer and said "No offence, but you're a bit too crap for us to been seen with"

It used to be a pain in the hole trying to get teams to come play you, i remember i just about abbandoned pre season friendlies and just ended up playing my reserves and under 19's about a dozen times before the season started.

Now i can have a nice selection of teams, big small and similar to my own without having to worry about them rejecting me.

If you dont want to be able to make a lot of money in pre season just stop inviting big teams.

It used to be a pain in the hole trying to get teams to come play you, i remember i just about abbandoned pre season friendlies and just ended up playing my reserves and under 19's about a dozen times before the season started.

Now i can have a nice selection of teams, big small and similar to my own without having to worry about them rejecting me.

If you dont want to be able to make a lot of money in pre season just stop inviting big teams.

i dont think what his worried about is making money from the big teams, but it has an effect on his take of the games realism..

and he brings up a good point you dont see chelsea playing pre-season friendlies with easington colliery (no offence to chelsea fans or supporters but they just arent big enough to match it with the easington lads)

a bit of fine tweaking as to who will accept friendlies from one another in regards to "reputation" = problem solved

I try and arrange a couple of friendlies against big teams a season playing as Oxford. Any more than 2 is abusing it i feel.

Of course no-one is forcing you to play 20 pre-season friendlies. Just a point on realism really.

Well, in my Bromly save I'm in BSP and I never get much for a friendly, I don't think it's as far-reaching and all-inclusive as you may think.

Fair enough, and thats the beauty of discussions. I'm in the Conf South with Basingstoke and have no problem getting Premier League sides to visit.

Must be the attraction of Basingstoke!

Big teams play small teams in friendlies all the time, so it's not unrealistic at all.

Noticed this on the last few releases. To boost your cashflow in the lower leagues you can easily make a quick buck by offering home freindlies the top teams. Not a problem if it's just one or two sellouts but you'll find that you'll only get turned down if they have another match clashing or if you've already got a freindly arranged with that team.

As long as there are plently of unique top sides to choose from, you can have sell outs home crowds every other day pre-season and sacrific your worst players to avoid injury/suspension.

It would be more realistic if Man Utd, Chelsea etc came back after your friendly offer and said "No offence, but you're a bit too crap for us to been seen with"

It's a friendly though, I don't really think big teams care how crap their opposition are in a friendly.

Plus

Big teams play small teams in friendlies all the time, so it's not unrealistic at all.

It IS cheating when you have 4 friendlies a week for a month against big teams in preseason for the money though.

Show me the last time some Blue Square North or South team played Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd in a friendly tournament then played Liverpool, Spurs, Man City in another. Its completely unrealistic.

Its clearly obvious in RL the above would never happen but its harder to guess (when playing FM) if it would or not be realistic if a BSN or BSS does it with a bunch of Championship or even League One sides. Even that would be highly unlikely.

i managed to play barcelona at home in a pre season friendly when i was newly promoted to league 1. they even brought ibrahimovic, iniesta, xavi, etc. doubt this would ever happen in real life lol. there should be a limit to pre season matches played and quality of opposition you can face depending on reputation

i remember barcelona playing a pre season friendly against dundee united so against a league one side wouldn't be too unbelieveable. Don't think its cheating just a tad unrealistic to arrange pre season friendlies every other day!.

i remember barcelona playing a pre season friendly against dundee united so against a league one side wouldn't be too unbelieveable. Don't think its cheating just a tad unrealistic to arrange pre season friendlies every other day!.

thats because they had a pre-season tour in scotland... they played hearts aswell...

Many things are unrealistic in the game ... but it is just a game. Yes, there are exploitable parts of the game, but I hardly see the pre-season friendlies as a problem. I usually manage to get one or two big games in the summer. Might be more unusual in England, but in Germany it is common for the big clubs to crush an amateur side or two during pre-season. Heck, they sometimes even go to Denmark to crush one of our local amateur clubs

An easy solution is to call you AssMan to arrange pre-season friendlies, it works!

An easy solution is to call you AssMan to arrange pre-season friendlies, it works!

Agree with this

I agree that in theory it is a bit too easy to make lots of money through friendlies.

Still I'm very happy with how it works in FM 10 now. Firstly because the tedious trial and error when approaching clubs is gone cause now you have a few groups of teams which are available and happy to play against you. Saves time and hassle. Secondly everybody who thinks it is unrealistic to make too much money can easily choose those option which won't make him that much money.

the only thing which keeps bugging me about this is that you can make the most money when playing away against obscure foreign intercontinental teams away, like The Strongest. I'm pretty sure they cannot pay you 180k plus expenses to play them in Bolivia or whereever they are. Nor would their fans be excited enough about a CCC team turning up there to spend as much on tickets to let them recoup their investment in our fees.

Tbh this is about the same as adding a manager and selling a player to yourself for a very low price.

It's possible, it's cheating, if you don't want to cheat, don't do it.

And fixing it by requiring a minimum reputation or something can't happen because these matches do happen, just not very frequently.

On top of that doing well in friendlies will help the team's morale and form and as you just don't do well against the best, it's not wise anyway to play against them only. The extra money will be paid for via a bad team morale at the start of the season which may cost as many points as the money spent on player might win.

Show me the last time some Blue Square North or South team played Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd in a friendly tournament then played Liverpool, Spurs, Man City in another. Its completely unrealistic.

Its clearly obvious in RL the above would never happen but its harder to guess (when playing FM) if it would or not be realistic if a BSN or BSS does it with a bunch of Championship or even League One sides. Even that would be highly unlikely.

This season Arsenal are playing friendlies against:

Barnet (a)

Crawley Town (a)

Sturm graz (a)

Welling Utd (a)

SC nuesiedl (a)

Daagenham (a)

AC Milan (h)

Celtic (h)

AFC Wimbledon (a)

Many of these games are only a day or two apart.

Big teams play little teams all the time.

This season Arsenal are playing friendlies against:

Barnet (a)

Crawley Town (a)

Sturm graz (a)

Welling Utd (a)

SC nuesiedl (a)

Daagenham (a)

AC Milan (h)

Celtic (h)

AFC Wimbledon (a)

Many of these games are only a day or two apart.

Big teams play little teams all the time.

But little teams don't play big teams all the time. Arsenal do only play 6 little teams this summer and no little team plays 6 big temas.

Once played big money friendlies with a BSN club for a full season. 2nd season I got a £375,000 transfer budget. Felt like I was cheating though.

This season Arsenal are playing friendlies against:

Barnet (a)

Crawley Town (a)

Sturm graz (a)

Welling Utd (a)

SC nuesiedl (a)

Daagenham (a)

AC Milan (h)

Celtic (h)

AFC Wimbledon (a)

Many of these games are only a day or two apart.

Big teams play little teams all the time.

Those include reserves friendlies as well though.

The players lining up against the likes of Crawley, Dagenham & AFC Wimbledon will be significantly different to those facing Sturm Graz, AC Milan & Celtic with very few, if any first teamers involved.

Those include reserves friendlies as well though.

The players lining up against the likes of Crawley, Dagenham & AFC Wimbledon will be significantly different to those facing Sturm Graz, AC Milan & Celtic with very few, if any first teamers involved.

The stadiums will still be full, and the home club will still earn its money.

The stadiums will still be full, and the home club will still earn its money.

Unlikely.

Last season Arsenal reserves played away at Lincoln City, Maidenhead Utd & Boreham Wood pre-season.

I can't find attendance figures for the last two but at Lincoln the ground was less than half full.

EDIT

On closer inspection the attendance at Lincoln did however stack up fairly well against league attendances during last season.