Part time to full time contracts

I apologise if this has been asked before, I scanned the search but couldn't find an answer.

Basically I need to know about full-time contracts. My club have just been promoted from the BSP to League Two, and has thus changed from semi-professional to full-time. I got a news piece saying that all coaching and playing staff would be converted to full-time contracts in the near future. I changed all the staff myself as they will accept a full-time contract without a significant wage hike. However, the season is now two weeks away and the majority of my players are still on part-time contracts. Will their contracts automatically change, or do I have to offer them new ones? I really don't want to have to do it as a lot of my players will demand wages out of my budget.

Any help appreciated, thanks.

I've just reached the same stage. You have to offer players new contracts.

Ah, a struggling season in League Two awaits then. Thanks for the reply.

I found it to be a good strategy (sadly too late for you to utilize now), to start offering full-time contracts while you are still a part-time club. For some reason, the players will not ask a horrendous wage increase. Then just make sure that the contracts run for a few years, so you'll have time to get a better wage budget before they start asking for wage increases (they still might though once you turn pro, but many won't).

It can indeed be hard to transition from semi-pro to pro, as you normally will not get a doubling or tripling of your wage budget, but many players will start asking for 3 or 4 times their part-time salary to take on a full contract.

Something I should have mentioned... you have to offer them contracts to turn them full time, it doesn't happen automatically, but you don't have to offer every player full time contracts. I have kept some of my lesser players on less money on part time deals, only offering full time contracts to my better players.

You are not obligated to turn all the existing contracts into FT contracts. What happens is that from this point on, you can only offer FT contracts. And even though you don't have to offer everyone a FT contract in the remaining two weeks, you should, because with a FT contract the players will fully commit to the club.

I think tbh is worth offering them full time deals anyway since they will improve more from training full time, when i got promoted to League 2 my strategy had been to poach youth regens from Prem teams after they were released so i guess it was better for me to have the better ones full time even in conference league (journey men and lesser regens were part time) as i gained success (finishing higher season on season) i signed more and more of them on full time deals until when i eventually won promotion and the team turned 'professional' i only had like 5 players part time, most of which were released.

I think tho most teams will increase wages after gaining entry into the football league, my wages were 3.3k per week when i won the blue square prem and in my first season in league 2 my wages were 7.2k, some of this was on new players but also i re-signed a lot of my team on new contracts and also they had clauses for 25% wage rise on promotion, i was ok financially since i had 2 appearences in the FA Trophy final (won 1 lost 1) which gained me around 200k each time from Wembley gate receipts which meant i could offer like 1-5k signing on fee for them to accept lower demands. Im not sure how low my wage budget was since i was still losing money each month but i had a young team so maybe they wanted lesser rises after promotion given that they were on less wages to begin, not sure tho tbh

Yeah, Ive managed to get all my players apart from a backup RB on full time now. The wage increase wasn't too horrendous in the end, ie nobody over £950 a week. Currently spending around 10k a week overall on wages, gonna consolidate this season with my new signings (I have the same policy as you, snap up released Prem youth players), and then work towards promotion next season. I've tried to remove the '10% yearly wage rise' clause in as many contracts as possible, though many won't accept the removal of a promotion wage rise clause. I too have gained money from an FA trophy win, and two consecutive FA Cup third round cup runs, but I'm still losing money every month. I have asked for a wage increase from the board which they agreed to, but I'm trying not to ask again as I need them to save money for upgrading the training facilities (one grey star...).

I'm already seeing stat changes since changing to full time (and hugely improving my coaching staff), so I definitely think it's worth doing. Thanks for all the tips.