Offering a contract to player playing in the same nation

Hey all,

I have often wanted to sign a player that is coming to the end of his contract in the EPL (where my team is also playing) yet I cannot offer him a new contract up until about 6 weeks before it expires. Other teams outside the English leagues are all able to offer as soon as there is 6 months remaining.

I know these are the rules, but I would like the option to ask the player if he would hold out on signing any new contracts with foreign teams until I am able to offer one to him myself.

I hope this feature is in FM11. If not I believe it should be included. I mean I'm sure a player would rather sign for Man Utd, instead of going else where like a Spanish or Italian mid-table team.

I agree 100% with this.

I also agree! If you could contact the players agent that would be good, then you can ask then to hold accepting any offers if he is interested in a move to your club

I do believe player agents is a new feature within FM11... I just hope this is an option within the conversation you can have.

so your basically saying that you tapping up to be legal in fm? I think i can safely say, no it wont be an option... if a player in the premier league has over 'X' (unsure of exact number) weeks remaining on his contract, the incoming club must have permission from the current club the offer a contract.

so your basically saying that you tapping up to be legal in fm? I think i can safely say, no it wont be an option... if a player in the premier league has over 'X' (unsure of exact number) weeks remaining on his contract, the incoming club must have permission from the current club the offer a contract.

You do not need to tap the player up but maybe release a statement to the press that you want to sign the player when his contract expires. Nothing wrong with that. I know already in the game you can say you will do you upmost to sign a player but I dont think players personalities are dynamic enough in this way. You can say all you want how much you want to sign the player but if a semi decent team comes in for him in January they will more than likely accept an offer rather than wait for your club.

Yes I agree that maybe an option could be there to state you want to sign him for free, but it is a very grey area in regards to tapping up and would need to be looked into a bit deeper for future versions

It would be a good option if you could ask the player to wait and sign for you in the summer and it wouldnt be classed as tapping up. We all know English clubs talk to players in England about moving when their contracts expire. I like this idea and hope it could be implemented.

Interesting idea, it seems to make sense but I'm not sure how this would stand legally. It probably says more about a player's willingness to move abroad than anything else, which is a particular issue with English players.

Most players would hold out untill the end of their contract, e.g Ballack and Beckford. Players would wait untill the season has finished before deciding especially in a world cup year that they would feature in. The club could not be sued or anything by declaring interest in signing a player on a free or asking him to hold out untill they can offer a contract to consider their offer, if they said "Leave at the end of your contract and join us." That is tapping up and is illegal, however like in the beckford case, everton declared that they wanted to sign beckford, either in January or at the end of his contract, so then beckford knew Everton wanted him so i bet in his mind in January he knew he was going to everton so he would consider all other offers but he knew he would reject them all for everton. So he would have held out untill his contract ran out waiting for a better offer than everton. So it should be implemented in the game as it is perfectly legal.

I think it might be a difficult one to implement in terms of game code, as although declaring an interest should make the player aware he can wait, legally any foreign club (or his current club) can still offer a contract which he can accept. If you take the example of Almunia you can see that the game isn't particularly good at coping with gentleman's agreements.

Technically, this might actually be easier than you think.

For instance, if club Y publicly announce that you want to sign player X when his contract expires, it tells a player that he is wanted and he gets unsettled. He starts looking around and sees there are several teams willing to sign him. This already happens in the game.

Now, the only addition needed would be weighing whether the player would really want to go to club Y, or that he simply wants to go to another club. In FM-terms, this could be solved by a League-preference (which has already been requested a few times on the board).

If the player likes the English league, the probability of waiting till the end of his contract will be much greater, since he strives to sign for a different English team. If he doesn`t have any preferences, he might either just wait till his contract expires (personality: balanced?) or he signs with another team outside the country (personality: ambitious?). In both cases I think it`s feasible adding to the game and as far as I know, this is also researchable as some players to express a preference in the media. He could even have a preference for the club which declared interest (personality: loyal? or professional?), which is a Beckford case. Since all of these personality traits have a range, it can have influence in whether a person would really sign with you if you declared interest in him, or perhaps not at all.

Right now the game already has players who either tell you that they want to wait before renewing their contracts, or sign up right away. I suspect this is already being linked to their personality traits, although I`ve never researched the possibilities, to be honest. So it might just as well be possible they already incorporated it into the game, albeit in a much less visible way. SI will have to confirm that though, but seeing how the players react, I`d say it would be realistic to request implementing this feature. It`s all based on coëfficients though, so there is always a chance that a very loyal person still signs overseas because they offer him much more security.