Stupid player, stupid agent or stupid bug???

Now imagine yourself in this scenario:

You are one of Brazils most promising players but allthough having turned 22, you still appear in the national brazilian league. As any other talented brazilian your biggest dream is to play for one of Europes top-clubs competing in the Champions League.

The problem is, that disregarding your fine efforts in the brazilian league, no european club seem interested in a transfer. Perhaps due to the staggering 27 mio.£ prizetag, your club has put on you. But then. in the summer of 2012 AC Milan - having just finished second in Italy and qualified directly to CL - agrees to pay the full transfer and eagerly awaits you at the contract-negotiations. Of course you send your agent to do the business, trusting him completely as he sends you of to the beach as he will close the deal!

Short after he returns, dissapointed but calm; "Listen", he begins "they were very keen on securing your signature, so we were in an absoloutly tremendous position: I started of with our standard demand on 120.000/week (3times your current salary) + signon-fees for you on 5 mio£ and 7.5 mio £ for my self. They seemed chocked and offered 90.000/week + 2.5 mio£ for each of us. But dont worry. I off course lowered our claim to 100.000 + 4.6 mio for each of us. But as Milan then once again dared to offer a lower amount, I walked away slamming the door behind me. That'll teach them!!! So they left Brazil, and you will just continue on as before at Santos. I'll stay in touch.

Ok. Lets see. If I were either A: the player, being offered a contract at one of Europes top-clubs getting to play CL and tripploing my wages + receiving a signon fee at 2.5mio£ - I would be smiling for the next 14 months. B: If I were the agent - on the verge of receiving 2.5 mio£ for half a days work - and with no alternative transferoptions - I would smile for the next 14 years. C: If I were the club offering 27 mio £ + 2.5 mio + 2.5 mio + 100.000/week, I would pretty much expect both agent and player to accept with gratitude.

But not in FM2011...!!!

I agree 100% with this. Seems like every player no matter what age or ability, asks for the same ridiculous signing on fees. It has become very hard to negotiate deals with players becuase they wont accept a penny less on their wages. A lot of users on here will say "its realistic" "I dont have no trouble with contracts" "Learn to negotiate properly", yadda yadda yadda, when the truth is, SI messed up with the agents in this game. end of.

And then he goes and signs for a chinese team for and extra £5000 a week.

It is too extreme in honesty. The agent should come in with his high demand, you offer short of that. Agent should come back saying signing on fee needs to be much higher for that wage. You decide to increase wage quite a bit and agent fee+signing on fee a bit. Agent comes back saying "we are close, add more fee or more wages and we are there!" You increase as asked, and sorted.

But no, you offer short of what they want, agent comes back with lower demand (but not significantly) and won't budge.

I'm still having a great game having said that. Just hope the feature is "ironed out" on FM12, as it is a new concept.

I agree - this is a part of the game that has left me hugely frustrated and I just think the agents are on cloud cuckoo-land, especially given the stature of the club making an offer to their players.

A classic example was after 3 years in the game playing as Man Utd and winning everything there is to win 3 years in a row, I make an offer for Jack Rodwell at Everton (who for the past 3 years finished mid table) and it was accepted.

I eagerly press the offer contract button, only to be confronted by a message from Rodwell's agent, saying his client has no intention of opening negotiations with me. This is considering that he has no other offers on the table, I have praised Rodwell in the media and he has Man Utd listed as one of his favourite clubs.

I mean this is completely unrealistic - I'm offering a player who likes the club a contract, chance of winning silverware and a huge wage rise if he had accepted, but his agent says he doesn't want to join - ridiculous.

This is just one example - I ahve numerous others of unrealistic agent demands. However, I am still enjoyin gth egame btu it really needs to be sorted for FM 2012.

To be honest, who knows how things will work out in real life with clubs, players and agents? The real game is unpredictable as well and I think that for the most part it's reflected in the game as well.

If this happened in real life I would have ripped my agent a new one because he passed up on the chance for me to join on of the biggest clubs in the world because he was purely being greedy! Beram Kayal, who playes for Celtic, fired his agent a few weeks back because he was getting touted about to different clubs. Now this was because the agent was being greedy, pure and simple, because Kayal is happy at Celtic.

While it seems unrealistic, it does happen.

That is a particularly bad example, but often I notice some agents who are the opposite and accept way to little. So it works both ways tbh, also if top players get stuck somewhere they dont like or on crap wages they often sack their agent from what Ive seen, perhaps he just really likes it in Brazil, it has been known for top Brazilians and S.Americans to not come to Europe.

Yeah some can be a bit extreme, but there is a fair bit of the agents mentality which comes into this. If he's extraordinarily greedy then he knows someone will eventually pay closer to the fee he's requesting - that or the player will reject all Santos contract offers and eventually leave for a reduced rate. I agree it's by no means perfect, but we can't make it as clear cut as stated above - it's a very difficult balancing act to get right.

Then remove agents.

Why make it such an important part of the game if you openly admit you're finding it so difficult to get right?

I feel agents have almost ruined FM. They've killed a lot of the realism. All most as bad a feature as press conferences, but you can avoid press conferences.

Edit - Or instead of removing them, put a lower cap on some of the demands?

My most important objections to how the game works now - concerning agents - is the fact, that they totally ignore market-mechanisms as in my own example: Agent will off course see to get the most out of the situation for their own and the players good. This includes dropping demands in order to come to an agreement with the only intereseted and attractive club. No way the agent/player would have rejected my offer IRL. Thats my clear opinion. If clubs had been fighting for the players signature: yes, demands could be raised (I furthermore find, that the level og agent-fees in the game is way to high overall!).

Well - in the situation in the game, I really lacked an opportunity to comment on the reason for the contract-breakdown, perhaps stating, that it was only the agents greedy personal demands that stood in the way. That way you could possible indirectly suggest the player to get rid of the lousy agent...!

I don't have a problem with greedy agents and dumb players. I do have a problem with agents refusing to budge after negotiation #2. It seems to be a very simple Initial proposal = 250% wage, Negotiation #1 max 30% change, negotiation #2 max 10% change calculation.

So if the hidden wage demand of the player (100%) is 10k p/w, the initial proposal is 25k

Then you offer him 12k

This offer is rejected, and the 1st negotiation is 17,5k

You offer him 13,5k

The agent leaves if his patience is low, because the reduction you propose is bigger than 1,75k p/w

That, or he stays at 17.5k until your offer gets to 15.75 or better.

This is even worse in lower leagues where wages are in the hundreds, because when you offer player/staff the max wage of 500 p/w and they want 600, you cannot possibly sign him. 550 would go, but not 600 (meaning that the #2 final reduction number is less than 10% but anyways...) So he would rather be unemployed and earn 0 p/w than accept 50 quid a week less than his 2nd negotiation.

The negotiation algorithm/calculation/system needs to be more flexible.

I agree with everything but this:

B: If I were the agent - on the verge of receiving 2.5 mio£ for half a days work

The agent has probably worked for years now for his player. Maybe he pulled some favors to get him to Santos in the first place, bribed the head coach to give him first team exposure, picked him up on a friday morning when he was hungover from a binge and drove him so he wouldn't be late for training. And not just for this one player who came good, but for a dozen others who did not. So now he wants to charge for the whole of his previous labor in this one negotiation.

Otherwise I agree that negotiations need more work. In the meanwhile if things are way, way over the top you can help yourself with the reset trick, or even using FMRTE to make the player agent love you. It all depends on your house rules. Personally I "role play" and like to keep things as what I see to be realistic, which means sometimes not doing stuff that I could gave away with by the game engine, and sometimes it means overriding the game engine.

the player will reject all Santos contract offers and eventually leave for a reduced rate.

Well if that happened the contract demands would probably actually be lower (in game I mean). In my experience when you bid a figure like 27 million for a player he sees that he is in demand and therefore greatly increases his demands.

I think I know the player you are talking about. To be fair be is the type of player who in real life gets sent off for his goal celebrations and in the game he hasn't moved on mine either. He did win world player of the year surprisingly though. He seems quite happy in Brazil, and there's no reason why not either, apart form money. The whole thing about it being their dream to play in the big European leagues is a bit Eurocentric and a bit presumptuous.