Soccernomics & Football Manager

Any tips on how to follow a Soccernomics policy in FM?

Right now I am thinking of 2.

1. Only buy players between the ages of 20-25.

2. Sell any player (no matter who they are) if another club offers more than their value (maybe 1.5x the value).

The "value" one is a tough one. Value doesn't mean "What FM says they are worth", but rather "What they would cost to replace". I recently sold the league's top scorer 3 years in a row for 40 mil. His value was 15 mil. Can I replace him with 40? If I wanted to. I'd rather rely on kids though. Could I have replaced him for 22 mil, 1.5 times his "value"? never. On top of this, any half decent kid will be stripped from you while still worth 2-3 mil for still paltry sums.

3. Scout smaller national leagues for players rather than the usual Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain. The theory is that everybody's scouting the "big" nations whereas you might be the only European top-100 club scouting Suriname and Venezuela, and a good player who emerges in, say, Switzerland should cost less (in both fee and wages) than the same player who emerges in Spain.

Buy low - sell high. (Essien & Benzema for example)

I often scour the Dutch league. You'll find great players and they sell for cheap. By 26 or 27 you can sell them for considerable profit.

I've another example of mine above. I bought a guy in the dutch league at 16. Loaned him out year after year. By 22 he was on loan at Barca, Valencia, other teams etc. And I sold him for about €40m. He never once played for the senior team.

Also you can't keep selling players if you want to win anything, It's all good to make money but football is about winning. Theorys like this don't put a value on the team having an understanding with each other and the staff. It takes a while for a player to settle into the team let alone the league and country if they are foreign. It's fine for baseball as the players rarely have to function as a unit.

So tips you say? Well basicly do what a certain Mr. Wenger has been doing over at Arsenal until recently. There are a few threads around covering this topic so i'll leave the big write ups to the pro's for now.

I am doing this but I rarely sell for lower than 6x value.

Also you can't keep selling players if you want to win anything, It's all good to make money but football is about winning. Theorys like this don't put a value on the team having an understanding with each other and the staff. It takes a while for a player to settle into the team let alone the league and country if they are foreign. It's fine for baseball as the players rarely have to function as a unit.

So tips you say? Well basicly do what a certain Mr. Wenger has been doing over at Arsenal until recently. There are a few threads around covering this topic so i'll leave the big write ups to the pro's for now.

I beg to disagree. Keep selling and give time to settle are not mutually exclusive concepts.

As you can see, in my 14 years on that save I've won 12 titles, 40 cups and have the world #1 manager spot in the hall of fame. I've bought 211 players (15 a year) and sold 194 (14 a year) with an average profit of 77 mil a year. After 2013 (once my youth system had kicked in and started producing first team players, a modest 3 years after the game started) I was selling at least 1 player pretty much every year for more than 30 mil, as shown in the "world leading transfers" page.

We have 800 mil in the bank, an 80,000 seater stadium and £1.1 mil a week wages. We have 7 players rated at 24 mil or higher (3 in the 30s and one at 29.5 at that!) and are the most valuable team in the world, at £2billion estimated value.

We have a £127 million loan debt against our name, but that's it.

We're certainly a selling club. Soccernomics would certainly agree with how I ran that team. We kept winning things though.

How?

If there was an "Average age bought" stat, it'd probably read 18. I scout extensively every summer, then buy the very best 15-18 year olds. I then suplement with the odd 19-23 year old if I have to buy a player for the first team. I tend to sell around 25-28, when wage demands and a player's value tends to peak. My players tend to spend 3-4 years at the club before they are expected to be in the real first team, so are always well settled and used to each other.

Buying and selling only doesn't work if you turn around players too fast. While I have done so occasionally when a star is available cheap (like Dzeko on a free, let go a year later for 30 mil) I try to concentrate on buying when they are young enough that they'll be settled before they need to actually step up to the side.

Good topic, i find the financial side of the game extremely interesting even though it's somewhat easy to make a lot money in transfers, still it's vital for a club growth specially if you are a lower league club on the top flight still with a small stadium, this is what i normally do:

-Always sign young players on the longest contract possible, offer larger signing fees if necessary to keep your wage structure in check.

-With older players i don't have a general rule, some of them will be happy to be take backup roles and can still be useful as tutors.

-Scout players from "smaller" leagues and countries, they'll have normally lower wage demands and will be very interested in joining your club.

-Look for younger players released from the top clubs since they'll generally have a higher potential.

-Try to renew contracts two seasons before they expire, if at that point you find the player wage demands are too high then it's time to start looking for a replacement and sell him as soon as possible.

-Every single player on your team has a price, always capitalize on the AI's interest to make big sales.