Are clubs spending too much money?

I'm at the start of my second season, and turned off the first transfer window. Since January;

Birmingham have spent £34 million, Sunderland £55million, Fulham £25million, and Villa £40million. None of them have had any significant income through transfers. I can understand Newcastle spending £19mill due to that being their precise income through transfers too, but the other clubs seem to be indulging in a bit of wild spending, which is obvious they cannot really afford, especially Fulham and Birmingham, in real life anyway.

It's not exactly a problem for me, but if i got Fulham into 8th place would i be given £25 mill or is it just the AI Mark Hughes?

SI decided the best way to keep customers happy was to get the AI to cheat.

Of course you get the same money! (If you have the same experience, board happiness etc).

Sunderland have a £38 million bank balance at the very start of the game so if you turned off the first transfer window their balance would be pretty big by the following season. Not sure about the others but in general it does seem that FM teams spend a lot more than they do/would in real life.

How comes my arsenal team loses money each year? I've stuck to all the budgets and I don't buy players over x months?

Or are those clubs also losing silly money?

I find that on pretty much all FM games, the board are idiots when it comes to preparing budgets, either that or are prepared to lose a set amount each month, then make up what they've lost with prize money / selling players. If you want to make money each year, your going to have to ignore the budgets they give you and enforce your own, at a lower level.

currently in my game at the end of season 1 man city have spent 129 million on 16 players. They also have not sold or let anybody go. I took over city to see what their wage bill was. 2.7 million a week!!! thats 140 million a year not including the 129 million spent in transfer fees. Also the signing on fees and agent fees alone muct be at least 10% of this .

I don't think there is a single club in the Prem that would turn even the smallest profit each month. I've noticed that with my Southend side (promoted after 6 years), with a wage budget of £400k per week, I make on average around £1.5 mil per month and my key players earn around £25k per week. On my last save with Norwich I started to steadily lose money when my budget went over 800k (key players on around £60k per week).

To summarize, when managing a club with poor sponsorship, average fanbase and average reputation you will start to lose money as soon as you start offering wages higher than 50k per week. What this essentially means is that you can forget about signing quality home-grown players (who are used to earning £50k upwards) and should focus on picking young starlets from continental leagues. Well, unless you don't mind losing money during the season and are confident you will win some major competitions to make up any losses.

Another weird thing - during my save with Southend and all the promotions I managed to achieve, I barely made any profit until I made it to the Championship. Note, I did not sign any stars and the core of my team was mostly young foreign footballers who demanded fairly low wages. In L2 my wage budget was around 30k, L1 - 60k, Champ - 160k, Prem - 250k initially. I'm no expert when it comes to football, but my guess would be that teams in low leagues, who do not compete on a European level, try to either make some money each month or at least balance out their finances. I also guess that getting promoted to a higher league would instantly improve the finances of a team - through higher attendance, higher ticket prices and more money for TV rights. Doesn't work this way in FM11 - unless you get to the Prem that is.

I personally hate starting a save with a team in the Prem, because it takes me several years before I manage to sort out the balances, sell or release players, coaches and scouts offering poor skills for high wages. Instead, I prefer someone from L1 or Championship, because upon promotion I can build the team from the scratch and don't have to worry about 33 year old wingers on 70k per week, with L1 attributes weighting me down.

All this leads me to the same conclusion - not enough control over finances in FM11. Money seems to be leaving the club and I can't do anything about it, apart from selling or releasing players. I know it's supposed to be a football manager and finances would be unrealistic. To all the realism fascists out there - it's a GAME, how can it be REALISTIC?

Looking at one of the posts above about Man City my guess would be they should go bankrupt within a couple of seasons - how is it possible that they make up the transfer spendings? Even from TV rights + winning the league + winning Champions League + ticket income combined will be nowhere near covering the transfer fees. Now, there's also the player wages...

The PC is either cheating, or the Arab sheik bought himself a personal playground, which is supposed to amuse and not make any money.

IRL though, I've got a feeling Man City will go bankrup as soon as the new owner gets bored and sells the club. The next chairman will be nowhere near as generous and how will the club pay the stronomical wages of aging stars, who won't be able to win any competitions?