Can you ever turn a profit at the highest level?

I've made a vow with this year's edition to be much more financially responsible that I have been in the past. The biggest chunk of change at Arsenal, ass with any top club, goes on wages. I'm working very hard to nickel and dime my players on bonuses, appearance fees, and basic wages. Meanwhile I'm losing anything between 5 and 6 million a month. Is there ever a way to operate at a profit when managing a club the size of Arsenal and the like? How much of a dent can you really make penny pinching your players (I'll offer 43 grand p/w instead of the 50 grand he wants, etc.) Do you basically have to vow to only work with an eighteen man squad and get the wages down that way? Am I missing something?

I can't speak about this year but I was making a profit at Middlesbrough in FM 2011. I lost $20 mil my first year getting into the Premier League but made money every year after that. I had no trouble making the loan payments on my new stadium. Management had taken a net of about $50 mil in dividends over the 18 years.

Yes, it is possible. I try to be financially responsible when i manage a club, very rarely will i go over 20 million for a player and never give wages over 100k. I always try to get the best kids and intergrate them into the team and selling others for profit. My FM11 2027 Genk (belgian club)save, I have won CL 4 times and my wage was never above 1 million pounds.

Im playing chelsea in FM 2012, its only been 1 season but i have cut the wages from 2m/week to 1.6/week while still winning EPL and league cup, but only ro16 in CL .

My main FM12 save si with Naval (portugese 2nd div club), its now 2015 and i have made a profit every non transfer window month.

I'm sure my manager would get the moniker of a 'selling manager'. I can't help but be fiscally responsible. I adhere to my own intuitive wage structure and rarely break it (see Tottenham in RL). Currently my cumilative Buys/Sells are 35M vs 85M with Fiorentina, Vitesse and Bolton.

I do all the time as Athletic Club, I've had profits nearly every month.

I have been getting a yearly profit with Ajax, but it seems the vast majority of this is coming from the fact I have had two good runs in the CL. I like to keep a relatively small, and mostly young squad anyway, which is almost a must since I lose all my big players after a while.

Its difficult but you can. The best way to do it is to sell players for more than you got them for.

Basically turn your club into a talent production factory of sorts; sign em young, develop them, and sell them off for big bucks (hopefully).

Also, try to keep the wage budget down.

Monthly? Possible, but unlikely.

Yearly? Easily, if you're properly successful.

Certainly doable, in my FM11 game with Brighton where I had a UK & Irish players only policy, I made a monthly profit whilst winning the league every year.

its completely possible.... I don't know how big your squad is but keep your first team down to a minimum and you should be ok

month on month it can be difficult at times especially when certain players are available to buy and you have the funds but the key in my games were replacing the overrated high earners for replacement 21 -23 year olds on fractions of wages who will then grow into your team.

also a bit of bosman dealing will easilly turn you a profit year on year after about 3 seasons into the game ..... for the first 3 seasons its difficult to get any decent bosman signings but after season 3 you start to get a lot of players for next to nowt..

I'd lose money month on month in FM11 but at the end of every season is where i'd see the profit. I took losing money during the season as part and parcel of the process really and only looked for the profit come the end of the season where it really matters as at that point it's where you'll see it start to impact the footballing side of things.

The Unione Venezia side I built up from newly-promoted in Serie C to Serie A title contenders makes about €200K each month, and that's with their original stadium that seats around 10,000 (moving to a new stadium about twice that size in another year). Should be higher this year with more TV money and CL football for the first time.

But then I doubt many other CL teams have a wage budget below €300K.

To be honest I dont understand the question? :confused:

Normally it is the other way around.. is there any way to NOT generate TONS cash? Especially with big teams.. No matter what club I manage, I've always had endless money (feels like it sometimes) and often find it hard to use the money I get.. this is especially so when playing in england.

Anyhoo.. try to reduce player wages selling off players that have a high wage and limited playing time/performance.

probably to do with prize money etc herter....

but to have the actual club making money itself is a bit more difficult, unless youve had the sense to plan it for a few seasons before or are at a club already set up well

The majority of income for a big team is generated during the off-season, through things such as prize money and season tickets. All of this goes straight into the balance rather than being spread across the year so you could be losing money for 10 months a year but still end up making an annual profit.

Therefore it is best to ignore the monthly profit/loss and compare the annual figures.

I can turn a profit of around 400k per month, or lose up to 4M a month, depending on gate receipts and TV money. I tend to make a big profit at the end of season anyways, so what I make or lose during the season doesn’t bother me too much. I am fairly ruthless with my squad, as soon as I have a cheaper player that can perform as well as a first-teamer, I’ll ship the first-team player out and sign a cheap back-up (i.e- had Julien Faubert as my RB, as soon as Jordan Spence was up to scratch, I flogged Julien off to Deportivo and save 49k per week on wages) and move on from there.

I am close to making a profit monthly with Inter despite their debts. I'm losing £450,000 - £1,300,000. The key is slashing the wage budget. Every little helps.

Usually I can.

I tend to sell off older players on big deals, or players asking for unreasonable wages. And bring in young talented players on cheaper deals. So I pay less in wages and I make lots of money from selling the players. I'll also try and get as any commercial feeder clubs as I can. Plus, I'll always try and get my board to increase my stadium or build a new one, in the long run the extra space can bring in over a million more per game.

Also, in my Newcastle game I'm in at the moment, in 2023, I just took them over in November, and brought in a lot of talented young players on frees who just got released(I'm sure there's a bug there, I've found 6-7 great young German regens who just got released...), while selling off or loaning the older players.

On FM11, I was managing Middlesbrough, got them promoted first season and made good profits, despite spending lots, just from keeping wages low and doing well in the league and cups.

As others have said, the monthly balance is largely meaningless for a professional team (or for quite a lot of companies, actually) since a lot of money is earned/spent on a yearly basis and not on a monthly basis. So many things, like prize money, TV rights, season tickets, commercial partnerships, transfers (except for monthly installments), bonuses for winning competitions, equipment investments... tend to be earned/payed on a yearly basis. Check your annual balance, and it should be ridiculously easy to stay in the black with Arsenal.

Edit : just checked my Borussia Dortmund save on FM11. In the 2016/2017 season, I earned € 295.6M, spent € 292M including € 19.1M paid to the shareholders - that's € 22.7M of annual profit, yet my monthly balance was in the red 10 months out of 12 (losing up to € 10M a month).

My PSG side make anywhere from a £3m loss to a £3m profit each month, depending on prize money for Europe, TV coverage and number of home games. My wage budget is the third highest in th French league, where TV money isn't exactly spectacular but I make a decent profit each year. Monthly profits are largely meaningless - it's the season's profit/loss you need to worry about. Raking in £40m+ for European and league prize money at the end of the season cancels out any losses from the previous months.

It is possible to go overboard if you max out your wage budget and spend all your transfer funds all the time. Also, bonuses and appearance fees aren't factored into the wage budget but can really add up over time so I always try to keep them as low as possible. Anyone trying to break my wage structure gets told which parts of the contract are non-negotiable and if they still won't sign they're sold.

On FM11 I tended to pay lots of money out per month when managing a big club (wages, bonuses, stadium maintenance, whatever) but being successful meant that I earned much money back through competition prize money and TV money. I haven't yet seen what it is like on FM12 though.