allowed to take club £50M in the red

I was allowed to take Liverpool £50M in the red by the end of January 2011, with no consequences what so ever. My finances are still listed as “okay”, and no points have been deducted in the league.

I would have thought that at the very least I would get some concerned messages from my board and players about our financial situation, as this has usually been the case in previous versions.

Granted, Liverpool do have £37M of sponsorship money coming at the end of the season, but I still find it unrealistic that I am allowed to spend so much money that I currently don’t have.

I do wonder if the mechanics of interacting with the board to get more transfer money is somewhat flawed. I started my save with no transfers budget first window, but as I got to the January window I had already got my requests for higher transfer budget, higher wage budget, and higher percentage of transfer revenue granted. All of them! And on top of that the board came in with an offer to change season expectations (welcomed new feature), enabling me to set my expectations two notches higher and receive even more funds!

I also noticed in my save that the AI clubs won’t spend more money than they have. This gives humans a unfair advantage, as the AI will be “responsible” with their spending, while humans can be “reckless without consequence”. A potential network game seems very unappealing right now, as there will be no way of knowing which human is dragging their club into the red, as everything will still be listed as “okay”.

What’s SI’s take on this?

Teams IRL spend a lot more than they have because at the end of the season they know they will get the money back through sponsorships, tv deals and prizemoney. You say Liverpool was £50m in the red. At the start of the next season they get £37m sponsorship (£13m in red), around £40m tv money (£27m in black), prize money from previous years finish (say £10m which is about a 9th place finish?, £37m in black).

Teams always spend because they know they will break even or get it back in the future, especially the big clubs. Even newly promoted teams to a lesser extent. They will buy players on the hope of staying up where another years revenue from the premier league will get them back into the black and leave them stable financially.

A £50m debt for a club like Liverpool shouldn't really be a huge problem as they could clear it within a reasonable amount of time. You'd either need to get in a lot more debt than that (like Pompey did) or start badly underachieving (like Leeds did) for it to start becoming a big problem.

I know they overspend, but would you say going £50M in the red in January is realistic?

If Hodgson can’t get enough funds in January to buy his “five or six players”, do you think Mr Henry will just say “spend £45M net on players if you wish, we’ll get our money back in the summer”. That’s the sort of abomination you can only get away with in FM.

If there’s never any consequence of going £50M in the red, then what's the point? You can just spend like a madman and never have to worry about having any sort of financial strategy. This game mechanics gets a big thumbs down from me.

You do realise there are very few football clubs who aren't in some form of debt, don't you?

A £50m debt for a club like Liverpool shouldn't really be a huge problem as they could clear it within a reasonable amount of time. You'd either need to get in a lot more debt than that (like Pompey did) or start badly underachieving (like Leeds did) for it to start becoming a big problem.

or do you really mean 750 million in debt like Man Utd?

I know they overspend, but would you say going £50M in the red in January is realistic?

If Hodgson can’t get enough funds in January to buy his “five or six players”, do you think Mr Henry will just say “spend £45M net on players if you wish, we’ll get our money back in the summer”. That’s the sort of abomination you can only get away with in FM.

If there’s never any consequence of going £50M in the red, then what's the point? You can just spend like a madman and never have to worry about having any sort of financial strategy. This game mechanics gets a big thumbs down from me.

There absolutely are consequences to driving a club heavily in to debt, as I'm finding out on my save in 2018.

First of all the Board will restructure the debt to take out long term loans rather than be in the red, which means you start having to pay out fairly hefty interest and repayments. They will then start to severly reduce your transfer budgets and wage budgets in future years if you're continuing to make losses.

For example, in January 2018 my Leeds club is £70m in debt, is currently £15m in the red and set to lose around £25m in total for teh current season (despite me playing in the Champions league etc.) As a result the Board have just cut my transfer budget for the season to £800k, without me having spent anything as it only started at £5m. The just reduced by wage budget from £1.1m to £950k.

An £800k transfer budget doesnt really go far when you're trying to compete for the title. I'm waiting to see what they do next in my current game.

The only criticism I'd probably have is that the Board will happily agree to demands (e.g. to buy the stadium, to allow transfers over 48 months etc) without pointing out what the long term financial consequences will be. It's up to the player to manage the financial position with sometimes limited information.

Aye aye Captain. I didn't just wander in off the cotton fields.

I’d still like SI to answer my post and tell me if they removed the “unhappiness due to financial situation” altogether.

I’d still like SI to answer my post and tell me if they removed the “unhappiness due to financial situation” altogether.

It's got to still be in there, but you probably won't see it until the debt is significantly large. If the debt was close to the value of the club then I'd start to worry.

Again, all this stuff SI was going on about how for the first couple of seasons, money will be too tight to spend big on transfers

As proven time and time again, the moment you hit the first mid-season window, many clubs in top divisions are back to spending big

You do realise there are very few football clubs who aren't in some form of debt, don't you?

And most of the prize money and TV money goes back into paying these debts off

And for some clubs, the interest rates are huge and take a huge proportion of this... hell, the Grazers are actually taking out a loan in order to lower Man Utd's debt

Each Premiership club is supposed to get around £40M/season from TV rights alone (actually varies quite alot between top and bottom, but this is not reflected by the game)... yet how many clubs do we see actually spending close to that without having to sell players at the same time (Man City doesn't count as that's the Sheik's personal money)... not many

And, if we take Liverpool as an example, if we look back at the last 4 years, they have only once spent more than £4Million in a net lose (players brought vs players sold), and that was the year Torres came in - and happened to be the first year the £40M/Season came into effect

So, being allowed to be £45m without selling players as Liverpool... well, it's never happened