Money disappearing!? (Not literally!)

Hi all,

My finances are doing my head in, i'm making a loss of over £3 - 5million every month, despite me being in the Champions League each season (+£600k every win in the group stages, with loads coming in for tv revenue etc aswell), PLUS i've only paying out £220k per month on a small loan, so where's my money going?! Here's a rough rundown of a general month in my finances:

Income

Gate Receipts - £3m

TV Revenue - £5m

Merchandising - £1m

Prize Money - £500k

Match Day Income - £1m

-----------------------------------

TOTAL INCOME - £10.5m

Expenditure

Players Wages - £5m (WELL inside my budget)

Staff Wages - £500k

Non Football Costs - £3m

Ground Maintenance - £500k

Bonuses - £1.5m

Tax - £1m

Other - £500k

Match Day Expenses - £1m

--------------------------------------

TOTAL SPENDS - £13m

That's a good month, only minus £2.5million, but as you can imagine, losing this month each month takes it out of your balance! So any tips on where I can cut spending or earn some extra? Also, what the hll is £3million on non football costs going to?!

How many players have you bought by paying in installments? And £5m a month on wages. Seriously!. I think its obvious where your problems are.

Oh and just because its in your budget, it doesnt mean you actually have the money to spend. A club might have a balance of £2m but get a transfer budget of £10m. If you spend it all, you will still be £8m in the red even if it is budgeted.

How many players have you bought by paying in installments? And £5m a month on wages. Seriously!. I think its obvious where your problems are.

I'm paying almost £1.5m a week on wages, with a wage budget of £2m, and that's with the slider all the way over to the transfer budget side, if I budgeted for wages, i'd have a £2.4m a week wage budget. As for player payments, i'm paying Porto £200k a month for Nocolas Otamendi. That's pretty much it.

What team are you?

To be honest, running at a loss throughout the season isn't a major problem so long as you make it up in prize money etc. at the end. That's how your board will be budgeting, which is why they've given you such a large wage budget. If you want to lose less money during the season you'll need to cut your salary expenditure. I would definitely look at the bonuses you're paying out as well, 1.5m a month seems like a lot.

There's nothing you can do about the non-football costs or tax.

What team are you?

To be honest, running at a loss throughout the season isn't a major problem so long as you make it up in prize money etc. at the end. That's how your board will be budgeting, which is why they've given you such a large wage budget. If you want to lose less money during the season you'll need to cut your salary expenditure. I would definitely look at the bonuses you're paying out as well, 1.5m a month seems like a lot.

There's nothing you can do about the non-football costs or tax.

I'm Liverpool, I suppose i'll just have to be shrewd and not use all of my budgets! But I still think £3m a month for non footballing costs is a bloody lot, especially when I don't know what it's for!

Yeah, I know. I was originally going to post what non-football costs are, and then I realised that I don't really know either! I'll have a look and see if I can find anything out.

There should be an add on release. "Finance Director 11".

I'm Liverpool, I suppose i'll just have to be shrewd and not use all of my budgets! But I still think £3m a month for non footballing costs is a bloody lot, especially when I don't know what it's for!

Which patch did you start your save with? Maybe you still have the old board and are paying back loan debt.

Which patch did you start your save with? Maybe you still have the old board and are paying back loan debt.

No I posted my main expenditures, i'm playing the most recent patch. Got a loan debt of £37m which i'm paying back at £220k a month until 2030.....kinda like my credit card irl

u will get most of it back at the end of the season. premier league is 1m a place and champions league tv money is 10m plus for a good run.

so 4th in premier = around 17m

champs league money = 10m+

so 27m to come back which should cover a lot of it

your wage bill is far 2 high though

OK, I've done a bit of digging around. According to someone from SI 'non-footballing costs' are the wages paid to all the people who aren't directly involved in the football side of the club. So think admin staff, club lawyers, accountants, caterers, marketing people etc. etc. So there's nothing you can do to bring this figure down, and unfortunately the bigger the club the higher this number will be. I imagine that the lawyers used by a club like Liverpool don't come cheap!

The numbers still seem quite high, but when you begin to think about the number of different people that would be employed by a large enterprise like Liverpool F.C. I think it's understandable.

one major point to remember is that just because you are within your wage budget doesnt mean that you can spend right up to that amount and turn a profit every month. My current wage budget is 10k a week, but with my income during the year I can only spend 7.2k a week to profit every week, the club lets you spend more cause you will make it back at the end with prize money and TV rights

You're only losing 2-3 mil a month? Christ! I'm giving away money. I lose around 5-8 mil a month. I blame the 16 year old hot prospects who won't sign for less than 10+k a week and the agents who demand 1.7 mil for renewing a contract. Oh, and the 30+ year olds wanting increased weekly wages and massive signing fees. And my lack of ability to sell players.

If you want to make money, or lose less, you have to ignore your board. They will let you spend the club well into the red.

You really don't need to worry about losing money each month, it's best to make annual comparisons rather than monthly. If you look at the line chart for your overall balance you should see there is always a peak around May/June, then it will gradually decrease all season until another peak in May/June the next year. As long as the peaks are staying the same or getting higher then you are doing just fine.

Every time I see a post about finances I say the same thing, and will say it again now:

Ignore the finances completely. I'm not even sure why there is a tab that shows income and expenditure. There is very little you can do in order to improve or mess up your finances, as long as you don't go above your wage budget or start offering high wages.

In all honesty I am surprised FM developers haven't over the years looked at this aspect of the game and realised that giving us more control over the financial state of a club we manage would make the game much more interesting.

Anyway, to conclude, these are the things you can do to improve your finances:

- get a commercial link feeder club. You'll make some money on merchandising. Only works with high rep clubs, so only works in rare circumstances. On FM11 you will struggle, because it's hard to find even a regular feeder club.

- reslease or sell your top players. This way you will save on wages

- buy new players, who have much lower demands, in their place

- loan out players with 100% wage covered by the club which loans them out (temporary measure)

- get players on loan with 100% of their wages paid by their original club

- reslease youngsters, unless they are showing some quality

- never ask for stadium expansion or facility development - it costs money! Also, what some boards love to do is to cancel developments a few days before they are scheduled for completion. Obviously, the money you've paid over the preceding months is gone. In the end, quality gym equipment in a room with bare walls is only good for scrap metal.

Overall, as you can tell, the measures mentioned above are insignificant at best. You are at the mercy of vague calculations performed by FM which will eventually determine whether you make some money at the end of the month. There is no transparency in club finances and it's annoying.

Now, some people are going to argue, that the game is a simulation and that managers do not get involved in club finances. Cool. In case they haven't noticed however - Football Manager is a GAME. GAMES are about having FUN and not about imitating real life to the last painful detail. If someone wants the game to be totally realistic then maybe they should consider becoming a real football manager?

Why not give us more control over finances? It could be an additional function, just like with the new tactics system, that can be switched on or off. Why not, SI?

Wages are not high for a premier league club.

I am Man City in 2023 and we spend £2.3m a week on wages. This is £10m a month.

Ignore finances? I disagree completely.

By ensuring that my club makes a profit each month I've had enough money to expand my stadium to the maximum (which brings more revenue) plus upgrade my training and youth facilities with no problem. I've also got plenty for transfers.

The trick to making money is to take your guaranteed money for the season (TV and sponsorship) and use that to pay wages. This is approximately £770k a week in the Premier League if you don't have any sponsors.

I playing as Liverpool with the latest patch. I have won the League, Champions League and FA for the last two seasons.

I am losing alot of money during the season making it impossible to create build up of money.

How much should I be spending on wages a month? I am currently spending 11mill euros.

In line with the wage budget question how many key players should I have? I currently have 8 key players, 7 first team, 6 rotation & 4 backup.

There's no simple answer to either of those questions. For the first, it depends on how much money you wish to save to build up your balance. Personally, I try to ensure that the club doesn't lose more than a million a month, in the worst case scenario, so you may want to try that. That should enable you to build up your balance year-on-year from prize money and allow capital investment in the stadium and facilities. To do that you'll need to cut your wage bill significantly though which will probably be difficult. Personally I think I would try to knock at least 2-3 million euros off the wage bill but that will probably take you a couple of years, unless you're lucky selling players. That's an estimate though, you'll need to look at your finances and your squad to see how achievable that is, and whether you should try to do more or less.

The key players thing is entirely up to you. I rarely have more 2-4 key players in my squad, because if you give a player that status he will expect a higher wage than a first-team player. There's no right or wrong answer there though, so do whatever you feel is best.

2-4 key players is probably correct. I have way too many. It'll be difficult to cut back particularly when it is really difficult to sell players.

I cant get non football costs down whatsoever. I just think its a bug. Its annoying as I also lose about £2.5 million a month.

1. Agree that the annual comparisons are more important. As long as you make profit year over year, that's OK. Monthly who cares, for example if it happens to be a month where you only have 1-2 home games you're bound to make bigger loss than in months with more home games. So you really can't expect to make profit every month unless you're really stingy with the wages, but then you'll have ****** players.

2. The OP's wage is not that high for Liverpool. Mine's even a bit higher and still can make profits yearly.

3. If you're Liverpool, why do you care if you make a loss occasionally. The board will pump in cash for you anyway. And if you make too big a profit, they'll take it away as dividends. So I just spend whatever I need to spend within the limits they gave me.

4. If you can maintain the current expenditures, you should eventually be able to make monthly profits (if that's what you really want) when you get a bigger stadium.

5. Maybe try to buy some young players and try to sell them on for profits. That's another revenue stream that you have somewhat direct control over. Always put 50% sell on clause when you sell. On one player I managed to make almost 30M on the sell on, for a player I bought for about 2M and sold for 6M. That's the exceptional case, of course, but in general you should be able to make a few millions easily from buying young guys and sell them on.