Over budget contract renewal flaw

This is something that needs to be addressed and hopefully put right for Football Manager 12.

The scenario: I am managing AFC Wimbledon with a wage budget of £18k. I am running below at £17k and narrowly miss out in the play-offs.

In the next season the highest wage budget goes down to £14k which means I am now over budget.

The flaws of this is many. It is virtually impossible to get anyone to buy your players. A player rated in the BSP at £8k being offered for free and no takers.

There are no inquiries about my key players, unheard of with a club cutting it's budget.

I have no chance of renewing contracts. All players are being offered a third of their current rate. Can we get realistic. There would be certain players they would renew at the existing wage or a slight increase. Some would be at a lower level and as a manger I would be asked to name a few we would let run out their contracts. The game just seems to have a switch where everyone is offered a third of their current rate until the wage bill drops below its current rate.

The cost of releasing players is about £50k. For players in the last year of contract. There would be clubs sniffing around for a good deal.

All I have a hope of doing is convincing my board to increase the wage budget via an ultimatum. This is not the way real clubs do business. They either sell off their big players or ask the manager to sell a few of the squad players.

In real life we have sold off Chris Hussey and fended off offers for Danny Kedwell.

I Agree this is heavily flawed, offering an old key player a new contract can be a hassle.

My example, i have D'allesandro and he is on about 50k a week. My wage budget has gone down slightly, and i have bought in a couple of players so it is way over.

Now i want to offer him a new contract and max i can offer is 17k, he says he will accept 35k.

However it won't let me. Now any business would see this and think, well it would get our wage budget down, and we want to keep him for an extra year so thats a great idea.

I disagree thats its flawed.

The board set the wage budget based on the clubs finances - if the finances have got worse over the last season you should expect your budget to be cut.

Once you are in a position where you are over budget you can't really expect the board to ignore the budget set and allow you to increase the expense further.

If you are playing at a level where finances are tight you have to be more pro-active and manage the clubs finances better. Only giving key players longer term contracts for instance while rotation players are renewed every year. Be stricter in what you offer for contracts and make sure your higher earners earn their wage on the pitch.

I disagree thats its flawed.

The board set the wage budget based on the clubs finances - if the finances have got worse over the last season you should expect your budget to be cut.

Once you are in a position where you are over budget you can't really expect the board to ignore the budget set and allow you to increase the expense further.

If you are playing at a level where finances are tight you have to be more pro-active and manage the clubs finances better. Only giving key players longer term contracts for instance while rotation players are renewed every year. Be stricter in what you offer for contracts and make sure your higher earners earn their wage on the pitch.

I agree, but It does make the game more annoying but I think it's more of a realistic approach.

I disagree thats its flawed.

The board set the wage budget based on the clubs finances - if the finances have got worse over the last season you should expect your budget to be cut.

Once you are in a position where you are over budget you can't really expect the board to ignore the budget set and allow you to increase the expense further.

If you are playing at a level where finances are tight you have to be more pro-active and manage the clubs finances better. Only giving key players longer term contracts for instance while rotation players are renewed every year. Be stricter in what you offer for contracts and make sure your higher earners earn their wage on the pitch.

On the other hand clubs aren't generally keen to let their prize assets leave for nothing, over budget or not.

Cougar.

The problem is that it doesn't follow what would actually happen in real life.

For example a player currently on £950 a week may well accept £750. But only allowing me to offer £250 is the same as saying we don't want to retain you. Maybe we should have the players status more clearly defined when over budget. Maybe we should only be allowed to have a small number of key players - who can be offered the same deal. First team - slightly reduced. Rotation - reduced and Back-up - severely reduced. When Liverpool, under Hicks and Gillett, were cutting costs they still allowed proper contracts to the important players mixed with moving on others, such as Alonso. They didn't just say every contract cut by two-thirds - no option. The game is unrealistic this way.

I am not even saying about increasing the budget but slightly reducing it with every player. There should be an option in the player interaction to speak to the player about the financial constraints.

Another problem is the flawed transfer system. I had three strikers all on double figures goals wise and a much publicised financial mess and yet no interest in three strikers good for this league and probably the one above.

Maybe SI should stop trying to insert new gimmicks to put on the cover art and try make the existing ones work better.

On the other hand clubs aren't generally keen to let their prize assets leave for nothing, over budget or not.

We aren't talking Man Utd, Real Madrid, or even West Ham, Coventry or Crystal Palace.

We are talking about a lower league side where transfer fees are fairly rare and most players arrive & leave for nothing.

what do you mean even West Ham? ;-)

But he's got a good point. He aint talking about selling players for a fee, he clearly stated that he tries to offload them (instead of paying 50k to release them) yet no one is interested in proven players for free, at the level they're at...

We aren't talking Man Utd, Real Madrid, or even West Ham, Coventry or Crystal Palace.

We are talking about a lower league side where transfer fees are fairly rare and most players arrive & leave for nothing.

"My example, i have D'allesandro and he is on about 50k a week. My wage budget has gone down slightly, and i have bought in a couple of players so it is way over.

Now i want to offer him a new contract and max i can offer is 17k, he says he will accept 35k."

This right here would be done in real life. The club would be saving 15k a week and keeping one of it's prized assets. There's no club in the world that'll say, no, lets keep on 50k until it expires and lose him for free. In situations like this, the cap should be whatever his existing contract is.

what do you mean even West Ham? ;-)

What do YOU mean even West Ham?

I have run into this problem, I went a little over budget in my push for Champions League football with my beloved West Ham United (I didn’t make it) and my finances were a little busted the next season. I went to offer Mark Noble a new contract as it was expiring, and he was willing to take a pay cut from £50,000 to £35,000 but the board would only allow me to offer him £28,000 plus half the asking bonuses.. does seem a little flawed.

I did get into the Europa (finished fifth) so there’s a little injection of cash, but it just doesn’t seem right that the board wouldn’t allow me to adjust the budget to allow a £15,000 pay cut to a first team rotation player. I wasn’t even given transfer funds (sound familiar West Ham fans?) to fling towards the wage budget. I made it into Champions League the following season, but this really did annoy me. He wanted £60,000 a week when I next went to renew his contract, and the agent now described his feelings toward me as ‘hatred’ ..

I know this system isn’t perfect, but maybe the chairmen need some business sense, I can’t see the Gollivan’s saying no to saving cash.

The maximum wage you can offer a player in a negotiation when in financial trouble should always be his current wage or slightly below his current wage. That makes sense.

The maximum wage you can offer a player in a negotiation when in financial trouble should always be his current wage or slightly below his current wage. That makes sense.

Why?

If the club is in financial trouble why should it allow you any additional expense. If the player leaves at the end of his contract your club cuts its expenses and saves money. If it allows you to agree a new contract you are increasing the clubs expenses for the next x years.

I would agree that I would like to see some more intelligence in what you can offer and this could maybe be linked to squad status - For key players & first teamers you get a bit more leeway, rotation are more limited and backups even more. I think the question is can SI program FM with enough intelligence for it to work?

Clubs in financial problem dont just let players go for free when contract is running out (especially not a key player/star). They would at least prefer to tie the key player up with the same wage and offer them out to other clubs after renewing. That way they get money from transfers than to lose them for nothing. Clubs are more likely to renew their star players contract and go into administration than to let the contract run out to cut cost.

Seriously! Take a look at some of the Premier League clubs who've been relegated this season and see how many of their key players who's contracts have expired are renewed on the same (or even slightly lower) terms - none of them!

Even clubs like Newcastle are telling Joey Barton that they won't renew his contract at a lower wage and will instead let him leave on a Free at the end of next season.

You have to consider that the combine cost of that players wage for another contractual term may well far out way their transfer value - using the Barton example a 2 year contract extension at circa 60,000 a week is £6 million before you include any bonuses

But when you are over your budget by say £50,000 per week and you can manage to get one player to take a cut of £15,000 a week but the board won't let you is very annoying. Because you can plan to lower other players wages and maybe offload one or two to fall back within budget, but because they give you a max figure for your high earner, it is them you have to get rid off.

There are several options real clubs can take to lower the wage bill. One of which is the aforementioned wage cut. The game limits you to one and that shouldn't be the case. Real clubs want to stay within budgets, but they also want to consolidate their position or maybe even improve if at all possible because of the financial rewards. They know that certain players are difficult to replace so will do everything they can to keep them.

This applies to smaller clubs as well. If a few of my players are willing to sign smaller contracts and the window is closed, this game forces me to wait until the next window while being over budget losing a lot of money needlessly. I am then forced to sell a player I might have wanted to keep. The stupid thing though is as soon as your under budget it will allow you to sign a huge contract that'll take you over the budget once again.

They have a very lazy system in place right now which doesn't allow for creative planning.

Maybe your board first gave you that wage budget expecting to get promoted and based it on that. Where you failed to get promoted the club cut back as there spending another season in a divison lower than they expected. I dont know