long term financial planing

hi,

I am a fm newbie into my second season as a n1-league manager. so far this game is wonderful and the only problem I had so far was sorted out with the help of this forum (thanks!).

I am very much looking forward to playing the next 3,4,5 years at 'my' club, Brighton, and will try to advance it through the leagues step by step. To achieve that I am also trying to built a solid financial background for the club by keeping wages low. So far this is working, with a lot of effort, I have now a better team than 1 year ago paying 20k less wages in a week.

1) Question: Will this work in the longtime, save the club money, which will generate interest or at least accumilate so that I will have more money to spend on transfers later. Or is that too complicated thinking and all that will happen is that the directors of the club will pay themselves higher wages ? In other words: Can it pay out to stay well below budget to save for later?

The other thing is that the club seems to have built a new stadium (I wasnt even aware of that, hehe). Now I am considering how to entertain 32.000 people instead of just 8.000.

2) Of course trying to get promoted would help I guess, but what other options do I have to try to fill the stadium? Does signing popular players help a lot or is that too complicated thinking again? Is there a 'natural' limit to my progress at Brighton because the city is just too small to ever get a crowd of more than X supporters into the stadium or can one establish/grow a premium club anywhere by just promoting from league to league?

Thanks ...

hi,

I am a fm newbie into my second season as a n1-league manager. so far this game is wonderful and the only problem I had so far was sorted out with the help of this forum (thanks!).

I am very much looking forward to playing the next 3,4,5 years at 'my' club, Brighton, and will try to advance it through the leagues step by step. To achieve that I am also trying to built a solid financial background for the club by keeping wages low. So far this is working, with a lot of effort, I have now a better team than 1 year ago paying 20k less wages in a week.

1) Question: Will this work in the longtime, save the club money, which will generate interest or at least accumilate so that I will have more money to spend on transfers later. Or is that too complicated thinking and all that will happen is that the directors of the club will pay themselves higher wages ? In other words: Can it pay out to stay well below budget to save for later?

The other thing is that the club seems to have built a new stadium (I wasnt even aware of that, hehe). Now I am considering how to entertain 32.000 people instead of just 8.000.

2) Of course trying to get promoted would help I guess, but what other options do I have to try to fill the stadium? Does signing popular players help a lot or is that too complicated thinking again? Is there a 'natural' limit to my progress at Brighton because the city is just too small to ever get a crowd of more than X supporters into the stadium or can one establish/grow a premium club anywhere by just promoting from league to league?

Thanks ...

1. you will lose a little bit of the cash at the end of the season due to payouts to shareholders but yes in the long term a healthy bank balance will encourage the board to improve your training facilities, expand the stadium etc.

2. if you are getting low attendances the board may organise a "fan day" to boost the crowd in the next game, if the game is exciting you often get a message saying long term attendances will improve as a result. i'm pretty sure big names improve merchandise sales but i'm not sure about crowds. I wouldn't worry too much about the size of brighton, i've managed to get crowds of 40000+ with torquay in the prem, the population of the area does have an impact on crowd sizes from what i've read but I can't say its ever been a massive stumbling block. Success is the biggest factor in filling your stadium.

as you've said the best thing you can do, obvious tho it is, is get promoted (twice). From personal experience I would concentrate more on getting to the Premiership then saving money, because whatever you save in the lower leagues will pale into insignificance compared to the 40m+ boost in tv revenue and prize money you will receive as a result of reaching the promised land, until your wages catch up you will be swimming in money

1) Directors and so forth don't take any wages out of the club, so you'll see no increase there, but Coaches and Scouts take wages and will request increases when it comes to renewing. It's often cheaper to let staff leave for free if their wages are too much and pick up better alternatives on free transfers for less wages. Dividends are sometimes paid to shareholders, but not always.

On the whole, a lot of gamers pay too much attention to budgets set in the game, ie, they believe by being X amount under the wage budget that they won't run into problems, when it's simply not the case. I've seen transfer budgets set far higher than the actual balance that the club has available, so spending it all would send them into a negative balance. You need to look at the Income and then set an appropriate wage expenditure cap yourself.

2) A bigger stadium is an integral part of future planning; more attendees, higher gate receipts, more season ticket holders and theres generally no immediate limit to attendances. Hailing from a town like Brighton shouldn't affect your attendances in the long-term. If you can get Brighton into the Champions League, win the Premier League and so on, i can't see any reason why Brighton won't see 50,000+ attendances. Attendances are primarily linked to your success and therefore reputation, signing a certain player won't have any direct effect.