Ridiculous Transfer Demands

I'm currently playing as Chelsea. I'm trying to buy Neymar & Pastore, but the clubs want ridiculous money for them.

Santos already accepted a bid $28 million total from Shakhtar. I was offering even more than that up front and they wouldn't accept. I copied their exact deal with extra money and they still won't accept. Why will Shakhtar's bid be accepted, when mine which is a better deal for the club not be? Of course the club keeps asking for more each time. Their demands are over $ 70 million now. I've definitely heard of people around here getting much him for much much less.

Same has happened with Pastore, except minus the Shakhtar part. I'm offering Palermo around the same sort of deal that I'm offering Santos for Neymar. They now want $87 million!

What am I doing wrong? Why won't clubs accept my bids when other clubs have bid even less and been accepted, and I know people around here have gotten these players for less. I should also note that I've already been able to sign David Luiz, I think for around $15 million.

First unsettle the player. Then he will want to leave, and you can get him for less money.

The Neymar one sounds like a bug, but the Pastore one is simply "we don't want to sell, the player doesn't want to leave, so unless you pay silly money nothing's going to happen".

The Neymar one sounds like a bug, but the Pastore one is simply "we don't want to sell, the player doesn't want to leave, so unless you pay silly money nothing's going to happen".

Yeah, wasn't thinking that they'd just want to hold onto Pastore, fair enough.

But the Neymar one definitely still gets me. Why would Santos accept a worse deal from Shakhtar, but not mine? Fishy.

Won't Santos have Chelsea as a disliked club due to them unsettling Neymar irl?

In past versions, the AI sometimes gets stuck in haggle-mode; i.e. if their internal price is 28m, and you first bid 15m, they might ask for 40. When it works right you'd scale up to 20, 25, and they would hold still or come down, until you meet between 25 and 35. But sometimes they just go nuts and every time you bid, they come back with something higher, especially when you offer clauses.

E.g. offer 15m; they say 40. You offer 15 + 10m clause + 10m clause = they come back with 40m + 10m clause + 10m clause, etc. Usually solved if you withdraw then come back a few days with 28m flat, though not always.

I agree with the last post in that the AI sometimes goes into haggle mode but on this case it simply seems to be a case of them not wanting to sell. The Neymar one sounds a little odd, I'm guessing they see Chelsea as more of a rival than Shakter hence they will sell to them and not to you however they're not even in the same league or country so it makes no sense. The Palermo offer I'm guessing they are probably rivals, maybe in Europe though again, this may not be the case and they simply may not want to sell the player.

IMO there should be an option to tell the player that you don't want him to leave (selling club) as it seems to be something that the AI has at its disposal.

I remember into FM10 and 09 that it happened, even if rarely, that a player refused my contract proposal even if the salary proposed by me was 10 times....yes 10 times .... more than what he at the end signed for antoher team.

How to know that ? Simply , I looked at him after having dropped my offer and within his new team ( same league BTW ) his salary was 10 times less than my offer...........

Sometimes the game need to put few obstacles here and there otherwise it would be too easy.....

If I've well understood this problem can be solved not praising the player.