FM12: Transfer Idea

Tantamount to real life, the game should allow big-name players to be subject of drawn-out transfers. Instead of "Barcelona offer £40 million" there should be cheeky offers to try and get the player on the cheap, giving the user the chance to reject the offer - in anticipation of a bigger offer - or accept it first time. Lukaku has been subject to heavy media speculation, along with Sneijder, et al. This could be better than the current system which feels so impersonal and robotic.

Similar to real life, the players could be understanding of the situation - perhaps even offering to buyout their contracts.

I would prefer they fixed the entire transfer system instead of just for the big names.

I would prefer they fixed the entire transfer system instead of just for the big names.

It would be nice if they brought back 07 transfer system and enhanced it.

It would be nice if they brought back 07 transfer system and enhanced it.

What do you mean? What made fm07' transfer system so outstanding?

What do you mean? What made fm07' transfer system so outstanding?

you could sign tons of free transfers and sell the players on for millions, infact you could sell any player in almost any team for at least double their value.

I just want to be able to sell the players i no longer need instead of them sitting in my reserves until thier contract runs out eating all the clubs finances.

I just want to be able to sell the players i no longer need instead of them sitting in my reserves until thier contract runs out eating all the clubs finances.

While I totally agree with all the posts that the transfer system (and/or the AI's use of it) needs a lot of improvement the one thing I do think they get close to right is that it is difficult to sell. Look at Man City currently with the likes of Bridge, Wright-Phillips, Bellamy etc; unless they are prepared to take huge losses i.e. if we say bridge is worth 3-4 million in today's market and they would accept 1-2 then fine but if you want what they are worth then it is likely it will be difficult. The one caveat is that I think there should be greater interest i.e. teams offering less than market value - I don't quite buy that there aren't teams interested if you are prepared to cut your losses

While I totally agree with all the posts that the transfer system (and/or the AI's use of it) needs a lot of improvement the one thing I do think they get close to right is that it is difficult to sell. Look at Man City currently with the likes of Bridge, Wright-Phillips, Bellamy etc; unless they are prepared to take huge losses i.e. if we say bridge is worth 3-4 million in today's market and they would accept 1-2 then fine but if you want what they are worth then it is likely it will be difficult. The one caveat is that I think there should be greater interest i.e. teams offering less than market value - I don't quite buy that there aren't teams interested if you are prepared to cut your losses

I think the point is the "market value" is wrong, if I can only get 1 million for Bridge I should be made aware of it (either via a more dynamic market value or backroom advice)

Its not really the transfer fee's that are stopping City selling Bellamy, Bridge or SWP, its the wages. The players are reluctant to slash their wages to move clubs.

What i hate on FM is that even when offering players out at £0 nobody ever bids, its almost impossible to sell anybody on the game these days.

Its not really the transfer fee's that are stopping City selling Bellamy, Bridge or SWP, its the wages. The players are reluctant to slash their wages to move clubs.

What i hate on FM is that even when offering players out at £0 nobody ever bids, its almost impossible to sell anybody on the game these days.

Thats what annoys me most, nobody even tries to take a player off your hands no matter how good.

I did a test once with Real Madrid.. I tried to offer all players out for 0.. nothing at all.. only got bids for about 1/3 of the squad.. thats just idiotic

i managed to sell the entire spurs squad in under a month, go figure....

http://imageshack.us/f/706/tottenhamhotspurtransfe.png/

you could sign tons of free transfers and sell the players on for millions, infact you could sell any player in almost any team for at least double their value.

Wrong.

1.I played it yesterday and there is no such thing.

2.You can sign tons of players on a free in FM 11

3.In 2007 when i offered my players ex. Paolucci face value 7.500 000.They returned with less or no offer just like now, however later on they still chased him with varying bids.In the end they got him for 11.5 quarter now the rest in installments.

4.I've sold numerous players for LESS their face value.

5.AI asking prices we REALISTIC. ex. Amauri had an 18 FV lots of teams chased him but they won't bid that much. In the end they gave him away for 13 000 000. btw he was unhappy.

6.Inter bought Tevez,Roma bought Ribery from Chelsea.Milan bought Torres.This kinda stuff happens almost never in FM 11.In other words there were SQUAD BUILDING.

7.When you rejected a bid, or wanted more, THEY ACTUALLY NEGOTIATED! Unlike FM 11 where Lyon enquires about Fabio Quagliarela FV 7,5. I ask 15 and they withdraw.They next day i offer him without listing for 14 and they took him.

I think SI should do what EA Sports are doing and really enhance the transfer system. Like in Fifa 12 they are going to introduce a more realistic system-with low-balling and high-balling, making it more realistic in the long term.

That's what FM needs.

I think SI should do what EA Sports are doing and really enhance the transfer system. Like in Fifa 12 they are going to introduce a more realistic system-with low-balling and high-balling, making it more realistic in the long term.

That's what FM needs.

Atm the FM transfer system is far superior to the FIFA transfer system so unless EA make drastic improvements i doubt there's much there for SI to look at.

SI should not copy or try to copy anything EA does.

SI should not copy or try to copy anything EA does.

why? - would be foolish NOT to copy something that would benefit FM just for the sake of principle..

first off because they are their own company, second their transfer system is already miles ahead of the FIFA one.

first off because they are their own company, second their transfer system is already miles ahead of the FIFA one.

You have a lot to learn if you cannot see the benefit of copying your competitors' good ideas.. - of course they copy.. everyone does it.. the whole software engineering business is based upon copying existing work.. otherwise we'd all have to invent everything for ourselves.

That said I'm sure SI also do alot of innovation themselves and this is the reason why FM is so much better than the competitors.

I actually like the transfer system as it stands, just wish the media side of things would get improved, I want to see fans flocking to the stadium to see a new star signing.....not a press conference with 3 men and a small dog repeating the same questions as when I signed a youth player.

You have a lot to learn if you cannot see the benefit of copying your competitors' good ideas.. - of course they copy.. everyone does it.. the whole software engineering business is based upon copying existing work.. otherwise we'd all have to invent everything for ourselves.

That said I'm sure SI also do alot of innovation themselves and this is the reason why FM is so much better than the competitors.

Where did i say that no one copies any ideas? But copying a poorer system is not going to improve anything. The transfer system EA use in FIFA is rubbish, why the hell would SI copy it?

I actually like the transfer system as it stands, just wish the media side of things would get improved, I want to see fans flocking to the stadium to see a new star signing.....not a press conference with 3 men and a small dog repeating the same questions as when I signed a youth player.

+1

and also I think the game really lacks the build-up to big games.. In-game there's no difference playing a league match against a crap team and playing in the CL-final

I just want to be able to sell the players i no longer need instead of them sitting in my reserves until thier contract runs out eating all the clubs finances.

...just like in real life? Why no just have a big effing win button on the match screen?!

...just like in real life? Why no just have a big effing win button on the match screen?!

I'm guessing he doesnt mean ALL players, but in the game some players that would have been easily sold cant even be given away for free.

Tantamount to real life, the game should allow big-name players to be subject of drawn-out transfers. Instead of "Barcelona offer £40 million" there should be cheeky offers to try and get the player on the cheap, giving the user the chance to reject the offer - in anticipation of a bigger offer - or accept it first time. Lukaku has been subject to heavy media speculation, along with Sneijder, et al. This could be better than the current system which feels so impersonal and robotic.

Similar to real life, the players could be understanding of the situation - perhaps even offering to buyout their contracts.

I did a test once with Real Madrid.. I tried to offer all players out for 0.. nothing at all.. only got bids for about 1/3 of the squad.. thats just idiotic

I was curious about this so tried the same.

I managed to get a bid of £0 for everyone apart from three players, here's who signed them

I think I know the reason. Did you do anything to garner interest in the players before offering them out? I always transfer list the player, set his squad status to not needed and set and asking price before progressing a day before offering them out.

dafuge:

nah.. that might be it.. If I remember correctly I just offered them out without settings status to not wanted and listing them.. - I guess there is no problem then anyway - and gotta love the Real Madrid board for allowing this.. this however, should be regarded as a bug, IMO.. no board would ever allow even one of those players to leave free..

Good work Dafuge!

To be fair you failed to sell Kaka because he was injured too!

Boards sometimes stop you from releasing players, but I guess if they stopped you from selling players people would get mad and make threads about exactly that on here.

Good work Dafuge!

To be fair you failed to sell Kaka because he was injured too!

Boards sometimes stop you from releasing players, but I guess if they stopped you from selling players people would get mad and make threads about exactly that on here.

Yeah I agree.. but from there and to selling Cristiano Ronaldo for nothing.. well there should be a line somewhere which cannot be crossed

Real Madrid signed Fábio Coentrão for €25M + Garay in real life.

In FM most teams are willing to give me around €6M for Coentrão .. yeeyy!

The main problem is that to sell a player 9 times out of 10 the only way is to offer him around, thats so unrealistic its just unreal. Clubs should actively bid for your players as much as they bid for other AI teams players, and they should not be pre-programmed to bid 10x less for a human player compared to an AI one, that really ticks me off.

The main problem is that to sell a player 9 times out of 10 the only way is to offer him around, thats so unrealistic its just unreal. Clubs should actively bid for your players as much as they bid for other AI teams players, and they should not be pre-programmed to bid 10x less for a human player compared to an AI one, that really ticks me off.

They're not... In fact I spend my time telling clubs to eff off with the offers they make for my players. They consistently offer about 1.5 to 2.5 times some of my younger players (less than 23). They normally give up after that (normally because I stick a £100 mil price tag on them).

The transfer system is fine, no matter how it is people will complain...

They're not... In fact I spend my time telling clubs to eff off with the offers they make for my players. They consistently offer about 1.5 to 2.5 times some of my younger players (less than 23). They normally give up after that (normally because I stick a £100 mil price tag on them).

The transfer system is fine, no matter how it is people will complain...

No it's not. They bid only for youngsters with high PA regardless of their CA or performances.

They're not... In fact I spend my time telling clubs to eff off with the offers they make for my players. They consistently offer about 1.5 to 2.5 times some of my younger players (less than 23). They normally give up after that (normally because I stick a £100 mil price tag on them).

The transfer system is fine, no matter how it is people will complain...

The transfer system is not fine .. start a save on the portuguese league and you'll understand. When David Luiz, for example, was still a Benfica player the game would set his value to around €4m i think, the only offers you would get for him would be around that price .. 4, 5, €6m, but if you offered him for like €15m some teams would actually be ok with it and give the amount of money you asked for. The same goes for F. Coentrão and Di Maria, etc..

Those are top players, BUT i remember offering Eder Luis (you can see in game he's an average player) for €6m and getting an offer for that price from some team i don't remember. See the diference?

Coentrão (top player) --> wait for an offer --> received a €6m offer.

Eder Luis (average player) --> offer him --> received a €6m offer.

So, yeah, i agree with Bradley.

I find it so much easier to sell players during transfer windows, I get no offers during the rest of the season

The transfer system is not fine .. start a save on the portuguese league and you'll understand. When David Luiz, for example, was still a Benfica player the game would set his value to around €4m i think, the only offers you would get for him would be around that price .. 4, 5, €6m, but if you offered him for like €15m some teams would actually be ok with it and give the amount of money you asked for. The same goes for F. Coentrão and Di Maria, etc..

Those are top players, BUT i remember offering Eder Luis (you can see in game he's an average player) for €6m and getting an offer for that price from some team i don't remember. See the diference?

Coentrão (top player) --> wait for an offer --> received a €6m offer.

Eder Luis (average player) --> offer him --> received a €6m offer.

So, yeah, i agree with Bradley.

It's how good the AI thinks they are. How well was Coentrão doing in your game? How long's on the contract? There are a lot of factors that may influence it.

By the same token we could mention how Andy Carroll went to Liverpool for £35 mil and yet that would never happen in the game, however you'll see Neymar go for £41+ mil and you'll see regen superstars going for prices in the £50 millions! The issue is when people compare the real world and what's happened this year to what happens in the game. The issue is that the players in the game are only as good as the editors think they are and they get them wrong sometimes. The game as such has to be variable in order to give some kind of surprise factor, however when they have this people complain about it. Oh well...

No it's not. They bid only for youngsters with high PA regardless of their CA or performances.

...CA does matter actually, I have extensively tested this on an old save as well... But hey, let's not let evidence get in the way of a good beating of SI's rather good transfer system!

The results of that test by the way, the AI favours high CA youngsters who still have potential. However they fail to tell who has a high PA and who has a low one sometimes. Interestingly by the way, here is a plot of the PA against the value payed for the top 20 transfers in one of my saves as a plot:

Before anyone asks why I added the linear trend line... Why not? Its basically to show that there's no visible correlation and to show how spread the data was. There are better methods, but I really can't be bothered. That's just scatter shot with the slightest trend toward higher PAs to higher values. That slight trend could be merely down to higher PA players ending up with higher CAs and is far too small to be meaningful here. In this case at least PA didn't rule the transfers.

Here's some plots of the top 25 transfers for the last August window on my game. Interestingly I came across on Enrico Loning, a player I signed a long time ago. He's apparently got a 196 PA (???), he was rubbish, he cost me peanuts and he left for peanuts too (~£800k). Hardly promising for the: "they only bid for high PA players theory" as I've sold youngsters for 10 times as much as I sold him for (at 20 by the way, I took him and some other kid from Bayern when they were 16 because the other kid looked good and this Enrico kid was okay) who have no chance of all having a PA of 196+. But don't let this anecdotal evidence convince you, here are some plots:

Top left is CA against the value they were sold for, top right is World Reputation against the value they were sold for, bottom left is PA against value they were sold for and finally bottom right is Current Reputation against the value they were sold for. Overall the best fit is either World Rep or CA. After that there is Current Rep which is slightly worse and finally PA is down right abysmal. The overall spread in the data is probably down to how complicated the transfer market is in the game, with clubs taking into account age, perceived current ability, perceived potential ability, their current club and wage, which league they are in, reputation etc. No one variable could really give a great fit. It's clear from that though that PA doesn't play heavily on the AI's minds. Also, all but 4 players in that list are between 22 and 27 with a two 30 year olds, a 28 year old and a 29 year old.

Have a nice day.

i managed to sell the entire spurs squad in under a month, go figure....

http://imageshack.us/f/706/tottenhamhotspurtransfe.png/

Even you couldn't sell Robbie Keane.

SomeGuy! that is prob the best post i have seen in a long time on here, well done sir!

SomeGuy! that is prob the best post i have seen in a long time on here, well done sir!

Good post but that doesn't mean that the TS is fine.It's broken.I've bought Coentrao numerous times for 8.25 and at one point i even thought he played for Juve. But that still doesn't change the fact that Squad building is broken and AI teams tend to overrate most of their players A LOT.FB is cheap because the way he is rated, but some players have very high valuation and yet they have absolutely nothing to show for it.

PS It ain't right for this to happen http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/849/maiconprofileattributes.png/ between the AI, but other clubs (Real Barca etc...) offering 34-36 for a 23 m rated Chiellini with 4-5 years on his contract.

Good post but that doesn't mean that the TS is fine.It's broken.I've bought Coentrao numerous times for 8.25 and at one point i even thought he played for Juve. But that still doesn't change the fact that Squad building is broken and AI teams tend to overrate most of their players A LOT.FB is cheap because the way he is rated, but some players have very high valuation and yet they have absolutely nothing to show for it.

PS It ain't right for this to happen http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/849/maiconprofileattributes.png/ between the AI, but other clubs (Real Barca etc...) offering 34-36 for a 23 m rated Chiellini with 4-5 years on his contract.

What's the problem with signing Coentrao for that? It's never going to be the same as real life, and that's how he's valued in the game.

Also, don't tell me about AI squad building, I've seen Ujpest (a Hungarian side) make themselves into a top European side entirely on how they built their squad. They were a major factor in how the league developed. Palermo have also been the same, as have a few other teams including Metalist of all teams. Some clubs are very good at building squads, some are bad at it just like in real life.

I'm glad you've changed your mind about how the AI value players at least though. There is work to be done on the transfer market and some issues still, but this isn't really one of them. A tweak here or there for sure, but the transfer system is fairly good as it stands.

What I dont like about the transfer system is that you can have some mediocre guy playing for a bottom/mid-table team and BANGING goals in and you KNOW that because his CA/PA arent that good you will NEVER sell him for a decent amount.. no matter how many goals he scores.. and then comes along this 18 year with ok-ish stats which under-performs CONSTANTLY.. but since he probably has a high PA, wupti.. you sell him for £10m+ and he ends up never actually performing for any clubs in the game, yet keeps getting sold for high amounts..

The transfer system is NOT broken.. but it DOES need work.. people claiming that it is useless or perfect are wrong.

What's the problem with signing Coentrao for that? It's never going to be the same as real life, and that's how he's valued in the game.

I agree with that a 100%, but there many other players who are valued too much and have nothing to show for it statistic wise.

Plus there are no negotiations.

7.When you rejected a bid, or wanted more, THEY ACTUALLY NEGOTIATED! Unlike FM 11 where Lyon enquires about Fabio Quagliarela FV 7,5. I ask 15 and they withdraw.They next day i offer him without listing for 14 and they took him.

It's how good the AI thinks they are. How well was Coentrão doing in your game? How long's on the contract? There are a lot of factors that may influence it.

By the same token we could mention how Andy Carroll went to Liverpool for £35 mil and yet that would never happen in the game, however you'll see Neymar go for £41+ mil and you'll see regen superstars going for prices in the £50 millions! The issue is when people compare the real world and what's happened this year to what happens in the game. The issue is that the players in the game are only as good as the editors think they are and they get them wrong sometimes. The game as such has to be variable in order to give some kind of surprise factor, however when they have this people complain about it. Oh well...

...CA does matter actually, I have extensively tested this on an old save as well... But hey, let's not let evidence get in the way of a good beating of SI's rather good transfer system!

The results of that test by the way, the AI favours high CA youngsters who still have potential. However they fail to tell who has a high PA and who has a low one sometimes. Interestingly by the way, here is a plot of the PA against the value payed for the top 20 transfers in one of my saves as a plot:

Before anyone asks why I added the linear trend line... Why not? Its basically to show that there's no visible correlation and to show how spread the data was. There are better methods, but I really can't be bothered. That's just scatter shot with the slightest trend toward higher PAs to higher values. That slight trend could be merely down to higher PA players ending up with higher CAs and is far too small to be meaningful here. In this case at least PA didn't rule the transfers.

Here's some plots of the top 25 transfers for the last August window on my game. Interestingly I came across on Enrico Loning, a player I signed a long time ago. He's apparently got a 196 PA (???), he was rubbish, he cost me peanuts and he left for peanuts too (~£800k). Hardly promising for the: "they only bid for high PA players theory" as I've sold youngsters for 10 times as much as I sold him for (at 20 by the way, I took him and some other kid from Bayern when they were 16 because the other kid looked good and this Enrico kid was okay) who have no chance of all having a PA of 196+. But don't let this anecdotal evidence convince you, here are some plots:

Top left is CA against the value they were sold for, top right is World Reputation against the value they were sold for, bottom left is PA against value they were sold for and finally bottom right is Current Reputation against the value they were sold for. Overall the best fit is either World Rep or CA. After that there is Current Rep which is slightly worse and finally PA is down right abysmal. The overall spread in the data is probably down to how complicated the transfer market is in the game, with clubs taking into account age, perceived current ability, perceived potential ability, their current club and wage, which league they are in, reputation etc. No one variable could really give a great fit. It's clear from that though that PA doesn't play heavily on the AI's minds. Also, all but 4 players in that list are between 22 and 27 with a two 30 year olds, a 28 year old and a 29 year old.

Have a nice day.

What I dont like about the transfer system is that you can have some mediocre guy playing for a bottom/mid-table team and BANGING goals in and you KNOW that because his CA/PA arent that good you will NEVER sell him for a decent amount.. no matter how many goals he scores.. and then comes along this 18 year with ok-ish stats which under-performs CONSTANTLY.. but since he probably has a high PA, wupti.. you sell him for £10m+ and he ends up never actually performing for any clubs in the game, yet keeps getting sold for high amounts..

The transfer system is NOT broken.. but it DOES need work.. people claiming that it is useless or perfect are wrong.

Read that above post there. The AI do not appear to value PA. In fact it seems to have nearly no correlation to value in those samples. Reputation and current ability however they do value to some extent. The entire system is far more complicated though. Performance does affect reputation though which in turn will affect how a player is valued and hence how much they get sold for. But yeah, read the above post.

Negotiations are a bit rigid... But hey, I've gotten some good offers and been able to negotiate well before. That does need some tweaking though.

Some Guy!:

I read that post.. but that doesnt stop this from happening all the time..

The only thing I find irritating is that whenever I try to buy a player who is supposedly good, I get quoted silly money.

I keep getting quoted £30m+ for Babacar from Manchester United. He is a kid still in the under 18's! If he had first team experience on regular basis like Rooney had, then maybe. But he doesn't.

I would be happy to pay upto £15m where most of that is on incentives etc.

Also, actually, about incentives. I would like to see these options expanded. I mean that I know you can offer £x (say £200k for example) after 20 games say, but what about offering £50k after 5, 10, 15 then 20 (making it £200k in total). This would be more appealing to the lower league club as the team might not expect the player to reach 20 games, but may still make £150k from it.

Also, I think when players are out of contract, instead of paying an automatic compensation deal, you should be able to negotiate a compo package. Then, if you can't agree, a tribunal will decide based on factors of games played, experienced gained, training involved (could do a sum of how much CA he has progressed since signing for the team - thus determining the amount of training he has actually received)...

Hope the latter two made sense...

The AI do not appear to value PA.

Then why is my Juve side getting constant offers for worthless hacks with bad personalities,determination and CA, but high PA?

Then why is my Juve side getting constant offers for worthless hacks with bad personalities,determination and CA, but high PA?

According to Some Guy! the chances are that Reputation is the larger factor. There is to some extent a correlation between Rep and PA/CA, in your case it looks likely that despite the poor players, they have high reps and and PA.

The transfer system is fine.

This doesn't mean that it works like it should in the game, though. I have played 10 seasons in Spain and Real Madrid signed virtually NO big names in those years. They signed promising youngsters instead, but just left them to rot in the reserves. Barcelona signed many good players the first five seasons, but since then none. They are now becoming old, and there is noone to replace them. The same could be said for all the other big teams in the world. Once Pastore, Henrique, Neymar and the other well-known big names have shifted to one of the big clubs, they stay there until they retire and that's that.

Of course there are exceptions among the thousands of saves around the world, but that doesn't mean that everything's fine.

What SI needs to understand is that the general quality of footballers go UP over time, and therefore they shouldn't be so afraid of "overpowering" the newgens. They should also realize that after three-to-five seasons most FM fans have managed to grab all the best players in the world and are dominating completely (if they start in the top division), and that the only thing that changes when you start in the lowest possible league is the time it takes to get there. Not "if": "when".

Those two facts put together should dictate an improved challenge to the player for any game developer. However, there are wrong ways to go about that, and there are right ways.

One wrong way is to increase the AI's ability to find out how to beat your tactics. SI has refrained from this, and for good reason: the AI needs to make mistakes too, for the sake of suspense of disbelief. Decreasing the player's options in regards to finances is another bad option. So is making the tactical interface more obscure, player interations more volatile, availability of information scarce.

The right way of increasing the challenge of winning everything in FM2012 is to improve the AI's ability to build teams correctly, and there are several things that needs to be in place for that to happen:

A. They need to be able to deliberately develop youngsters into players that would strengthen their squads.

A1: To do this, they need to tutor ALL their youngsters with first team players that are better than them in key aspects like Determination, Professionality and Ambition. The best managers in the game should know all about this and rarely fail.

A2: The youngsters also need first team action, match fitness and to perform well. The best managers in the game should be able to correctly determine whether or not a young player would benefit from first team experience at the club or on loan, and rarely fail to do so.

A3: A coach in a professional, top club knows what he is doing. There are no fitness coaches in the Premier League who doesn't know how to do his job. In FM, the first thing any veteran FM'er does when taking charge of a club is to throw out the entire staff presiding there, replacing them with someone who knows how to do their job. This needs to be fixed. Manchester United should have a complete 5-star staff setup, scouts that knows the difference between rubbish and gold, and physios that know physiotherapy. So should all the other major clubs in the world.

B: They need to be able to deliberately and intelligently build squads that improves the way the manager wants the team to play. In order for them to be able to do that, there are a few things that needs to change:

B1: The player descriptions must be expanded. When a tactic (TC) is set up, certain player types are necessary in certain positions and as a manager you need to either select the right role for the right player, or the right player for the right role. As of now, we cannot search our shortlist or list of known players for such player types and neither can the AI. This is not such a problem for us as it is for the AI, since we can figure it out anyways. If we and the AI could search for "hard-working, athletic midfield anchor" or "hard-working, creative deep-lying playmaker", it would benefit both in terms of coherent team-building.

B2: The AI managers should seek to put their mark on the team as soon as possible, and to do so by shifting players at a much higher pace than now. Some managers should employ a "revolving door" policy, while others (like SAF) like stability.

B3: Football players in FM should to a much higher degree have their agents look for greener grass elsewhere. They should avoid signing new contracts until all avenues have been explored.

B4: The AI managers must have much better programming when it comes to bargaining. If you have a continental class player worth £10m on a five year contract, they must know that they need to bid at least three maybe four or five times his face value. If they want him and can afford this, and they can't get a better or equally good player for less, they need to make sure they get him. So the AI managers need to monitor many players of the same type (B1) over time, and knowing the rarity of top class players they need to make sure that other big clubs don't get him. There are no bidding wars in FM11. There must be bidding wars in FM12.

Good post. One thing I would like to add is that the manager's squad management style should not all be the same.

E.g. There are managers who prefer experienced heads rather than youngsters so his transfer targets should be geared towards players of age 30+.

This would provide more variety to squad building and also ensure that the whole world is not chasing the same wonderkid.

Interesting points... I don't agree with them all, but hey... The one I agree least with is tutoring, the AI tends to do this as it stands and in truth you don't really need to do it a lot of the time. The issue with the AI is generally that some managers have absolutely no ability to realise that they should get youngsters game time. However, I've seen plenty who do. I guess they just need to make them more consistent at big clubs. Again, its interesting that I've actually seen an AI make a wonderful team in the Hungarian Leagues, one that managed to compete with me basically spoon feeding good young players to Debrecen, Vidi, Gyor and a few others all on its own. They've made a lot end European side entirely on the back of how they recruited. On the who though they do need a little bit of a touch up.

Also, a lot of players already do that with the contracts, if you made them any more vicious (with contract demands etc) then I think a lot of people would just stop playing. The vast majority of players do just sign new contracts with their clubs with limited fuss, it's only a small minority that don't. However this minority is maybe a bit too small in the game as it stands... maybe.

Anyhow, anyone want to keep disputing that the AIs don't value PA more than CA or just general reputation, here's some more graphs:

We have on the top left CA against current reputation, top right is CA against World reputation, bottom left is PA against current reputation and bottom right is PA against World reputation. What can we conclude form this. CA has a very noticeable effect on player's reputations, in fact a far more significant correlation than any of those seen in the transfer graphs above. PA is also more significant, but still no even as good as CA against the value that those players above were sold for. The okay correlation with PA (far less significant than that of CA) is probably down to allowing CA to become higher and probably only has a very small effect on its own. Actually data to back up claims is fun right?