The Worst Transfer Policy in the World a.k.a Why the AI is so very Stupid

A friend of mine recently sent me his current save game so I could have a poke around and see what he'd been up to. He's managing CSKA Moscow, and has been since the start, but I thought I'd have a look at Man Utd. Their transfer policy is so bad, the word "joke" would be unkind to things being a joke. It borders on moronic. Obviously one club in one save probably doesn't prove too much conclusively, but it surely hints at something being wrong. My friend is currently in the 2016/17 season. Here are the examples from Man Utd of the utter daftness they've engaged in. None of these players have been significantly affected by injuries as far as I can ascertain.

Yann M'Vila - one season at the club - £42m transfer - made 12 league appearances.

Federico Fazio - one season at the club - £15m transfer - made 9 league appearances - now on the transfer list.

Yuri Zhirkov - five seasons at the club - £21m transfer (at the age of 31) - made 67 appearances - not toooo bad, but 67 in five seasons for a £21m signing?

Axel Witsel - five seasons at the club (one at Porto on loan) - £19.5m transfer - made 29 appearances

Benoit Tremoulinas - two seasons at the club - £20.5m transfer (age 28 and not a full international cap at the time) - made 36 appearances

Nicolas Nkoulou - two seasons at the club - £16.5m transfer - 12 appearances

Not daft in the same way, but they also signed Steven Naismith. Ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm sure people will come up with real life examples of people who signed for big sums and then hardly played. I'm not saying it should never happen in FM. What bothers me here is that, whereas in real life there tends to be extenuating circumstances, it just looks like poor AI transfer coding here. United have been spalshing silly sums of money for players that they can barely even fit in. Zhirkov's and Tremoulinas's fees were horribly inflated for back up players in their late 20s/early30s. The bigger question is why were United spending so much on players with no place in the team? M'Vila in particular is just insane.

in my save arsenal in 2013 arsenal had van persie as their top scorer with 18 goals in 23 appearance. the following season they promoted bendter and relegated van persie to the reserves. very strange.

Yep, consistently had this problem with FM for the past 5 years or so and yet SI do absolutely nothing to remedy this incredibly obvious issue.

One of the reasons why FM is becoming so easy.

napoli seem to sell cavani, hamsik and levezzi on my saves.

napoli seem to sell cavani, hamsik and levezzi on my saves.

Nothing wrong with this. Obviously we don't know the future and those players may well stay with Napoli for a long time to come, but they are all very good players with growing reputations and it's not unthinkable that they'd move on. There are, after all, bigger and richer clubs than Napoli.

The AI sucks at transfers indeed, but not only that. They suck at renewing contracts also! On my ManUtd save I was able to sign Petr Cech and Mario Gomez on free transfer just after two seasons. After 2 months Barca bid £35 mill for Cech, even though they did not make a move for him when he was a free agent.

Agree with the op here. I havent played FM since 2010, but this was the #1 issue I stopped playing. Every new game I started, was fun and a challenge for a couple seasons, then I was a super team and all the other teams that HAD been good, were now awful because they lost their best players but made no effort to sign anyone to replace them.

It got so bad that in basically every game of mine I would take control of the big clubs in my league during a transfer window just so I could find some good players to add to their teams and actually spend their major transfer budget and money that they just sit on otherwise for years while im outspending them and dominating them with all my new great players.

Teams never get better. If you pick a middle or bad team, they will always start better than you, and thats fun, but from the moment the game starts, your focus is obviously on getting better, and you do, and they always get worse. Eventually you're great and they're terrible. The A.I is obviously awful because not only are teams not improving themselves just for the sake of doing it, but moreover they dont adapt to you. Real Madrid went and spent so much money on Ronaldo and other players because Barca was getting so good, and they wanted to match them. That never happens. If I win three champions leagues in a row, and the premier league three years in a row, wouldn't United or Chelsea say, okay, enough of this ********, time for a big acquisition?

But they don't. It's a huge problem. Are you actually telling me they didnt fix this for FM 12? Seems like the first thing anyone with a brain would look to fix.

I think this issue is more that the top sides get older and older. I'm in 2020 in my current save and the squads just now are starting to be composed mostly of newgens, though you still see Aguero, Kompany and Hart turning out for City, Song and Wilshere turning out for Arsenal, etc. If you look at real life top sides, who's still where they were in 2001 in the PL? It was uglier 2-3 seasons ago. That's what the AI in FM never figures out, I think because they base everything on CA and reputation. That damned reputation ruins everything. They do buy up the good young players, but they still buy older players for those same positions. Then they either kill the young player by letting him rot in the reserves or they waste transfer money as described above. I think the trick is that the AI for top clubs should be looking to have the majority of their squad in their prime. So when top striker X turns 30, they're looking to 24-year old striker Y to replace him. By the time he's 32 he's moved on, etc, etc.

For whatever reason, and I've bought every CM/FM for the past 10 years, they've never been able to implement this and its oh-so-simple to be the best club in the world 7-8 years out from the start date. It gets a little better when there's nothing left but newgens but of course its too late by then.

Managers often buy players that will not fit into the system they will use for 90% of their games. Like a winger for a manager who plays 4-3-1-2, and they make maybe a handful of sub appearances a season. This bothers me the most. Either the AI managers should be more flexible with their tactics than they are in the game, preferably, or this doesn't happen.

My save is at 2016/17 and Man United have made the following big transfers.

2nd Season

Domenico Cristico for £18.75 million has played 30-40 games a season since his transfer.

Douglas Cost for £19 million played 35-40 games a season since arriving.

3rd Season

Kwadwo Asamoah for £20 million played 30 games for two seasons then 18 games for one season due to a 3 months injury.

4th Season

Only really signed Gaitan for £11.25 million and he played 12 games but was signed on 26th of January.

All their other signings have been under £3 million. Seems like they have done pretty well on my save but usually they do not do nearly as well as this.

Every player Man City have signed that cost over £12 million has played at least 25 games a season. They seem to sign players for over £15 million or under £5 million. Liverpool signed Kader Mangane for £11.25 million first season he played 28 games, second season he played 7 games and third season he was sold for £1.3 million.

Chelsea signed Lavezzi for £20 million and he played between 32 and 45 games a season hit 31 and is now in the reserves. In the second season as well as Lavezzi they signed Di Maria for £15 million who has played between 37 and 49 games a season. Third season Chelsea got Edison Cavani for £28.5 million and he has played 50 games a season twice and 33 once. The next season Douglas was signed from Malaga for £15 million and played 22 games after signing in January went on to play 45 and 47 games in the following seasons. In January of the following season they signed Aboubakar for £17 million he played 20 games and then 37 matches. Also arriving was Jano for £19 million he played 13 games and then 33 games.

This is the only long-ish game I have played on FM12 and to be honest the transfers seem to be pretty good for the big English clubs on my game. What annoys me more is the lack of interest in decent EPL level players. Cattermole, Defoe, Cech, De Jong and several others contracts run out and whilst in real life they would have people all over trying to sign them in FM they have no interest at all.

The same could be said for transfer listed players who would do a jobs at various levels Adam Johnson, Micah Richards, Nigel de Jong, Michael Turner, Jay Spearing, Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Diaby. I have seen lots of these type of players listed for under £5 million and Wilshere under £10 million yet there is no one at all trying to sign them.

Why is it that every time someone has a legitimate complaint about the game, someone comes in trying to refute it? Acid, you're a moderator on the football manager forums, but you've only played football manager once past a couple seasons?

Just wondering. If that is indeed the case, then it sounds like you've had a good experience, and Im glad someone has a good long game going. But it's not the norm, as you can see here. This is a real issue and the people here just wish S.I actually cared. What S.I have created in terms of the searching for players, allocating funds to find which ones to sign, mixing and matching them into a team, creating tactics for that team, and then turning that into a 3D match which makes sense and looks realistic, I mean its brilliant. It's so multi-faceted, the possibilities are endless.

It's that a couple STUPID little things are ruining everything. If they just cared enough to fix the problems that are getting in the way of those possibilities and screwing everything up, I mean the potential is there for something truly amazing. Why aren't they trying to achieve it???

Why is it that every time someone has a legitimate complaint about the game, someone comes in trying to refute it? Acid, you're a moderator on the football manager forums, but you've only played football manager once past a couple seasons?

Just wondering. If that is indeed the case, then it sounds like you've had a good experience, and Im glad someone has a good long game going. But it's not the norm, as you can see here. This is a real issue and the people here just wish S.I actually cared. What S.I have created in terms of the searching for players, allocating funds to find which ones to sign, mixing and matching them into a team, creating tactics for that team, and then turning that into a 3D match which makes sense and looks realistic, I mean its brilliant. It's so multi-faceted, the possibilities are endless.

It's that a couple STUPID little things are ruining everything. If they just cared enough to fix the problems that are getting in the way of those possibilities and screwing everything up, I mean the potential is there for something truly amazing. Why aren't they trying to achieve it???

I said there are problems with it when it comes to free transfers and transfer listed players. Don't see how me being a mod means I should have played loads of long term saves. I have played as Malaga for 4 seasons, Sunderland for 4 seasons and a journeyman save for a bit longer. In previous games I have seen many examples of what the OP and others have posted but on FM12 I have not seen as many.

I have edited your post in future please do not swear on the forums.

A friend of mine recently sent me his current save game so I could have a poke around and see what he'd been up to. He's managing CSKA Moscow, and has been since the start, but I thought I'd have a look at Man Utd. Their transfer policy is so bad, the word "joke" would be unkind to things being a joke. It borders on moronic. Obviously one club in one save probably doesn't prove too much conclusively, but it surely hints at something being wrong. My friend is currently in the 2016/17 season. Here are the examples from Man Utd of the utter daftness they've engaged in. None of these players have been significantly affected by injuries as far as I can ascertain.

Yann M'Vila - one season at the club - £42m transfer - made 12 league appearances.

Federico Fazio - one season at the club - £15m transfer - made 9 league appearances - now on the transfer list.

Yuri Zhirkov - five seasons at the club - £21m transfer (at the age of 31) - made 67 appearances - not toooo bad, but 67 in five seasons for a £21m signing?

Axel Witsel - five seasons at the club (one at Porto on loan) - £19.5m transfer - made 29 appearances

Benoit Tremoulinas - two seasons at the club - £20.5m transfer (age 28 and not a full international cap at the time) - made 36 appearances

Nicolas Nkoulou - two seasons at the club - £16.5m transfer - 12 appearances

Not daft in the same way, but they also signed Steven Naismith. Ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm sure people will come up with real life examples of people who signed for big sums and then hardly played. I'm not saying it should never happen in FM. What bothers me here is that, whereas in real life there tends to be extenuating circumstances, it just looks like poor AI transfer coding here. United have been spalshing silly sums of money for players that they can barely even fit in. Zhirkov's and Tremoulinas's fees were horribly inflated for back up players in their late 20s/early30s. The bigger question is why were United spending so much on players with no place in the team? M'Vila in particular is just insane.

Just curious did Zhirkov's appearances dip drastically towards the end of the five seasons? On my Malaga save they signed him for £19 million in January of the second season. He has averaged just over 7.4 for the three season he has been there and played a lot of games.

How much did they lose by selling M'Vila on?

Just to give a bit of contrast. In my game, 4 seasons in, United have made the following big money transfers.

SEASON 1

Marouane Fellaini - £17.75m transfer - 64 appearances so far

SEASON 2

Dmytro Chygrynskyi - £16.5m - 46 appearances

Domenico Criscito - £19m - 68 appearances

Milan Badelj - £20m - 56 appearances

Gregory van der Wiel - £20.5m - 20 appearances (Has been very injury prone)

And in season 4, they've just signed McGeady for 20m, and Griezmann for 21m so will be interesting to see how often they play. But it seems that in my game, the AI seems okay in the sense that Utd are only spending big money players that they intend to feature prominently in their squads.

Ive always complained about this but mostly to myself lol

my first ever game on 12 Man United signed Marvin Martin for £18million and he played nearly every game in the league in the center of mid... in January in 2nd season they signed Diego Perotti for a decent £8million and his career started off slow but theyve now started playing him as a left winger. But in the summer they signed Vargas from Fiorentina for £13.75million. hes made 2 sub appearances and now hes in the reserves and is unhappy because he wants first team football. i thought so far so good until that happened.. ive said this in another thread that Chelsea bought Afellay from Barca and never played him at all for about £15million, before i knew it he was on loan to Shalke and still hasnt gotten into the Chelsea team since his return.

I always thought SI intentionally programmed the game this way so human manager can sell crap players for more money. If the AI were actually good at transfer strategy, it'd be impossible to offload half the Liverpool squad.

after so many years, SI still don't take class, form and loyalty into consideration. All they care is only PA.

Why is it that every time someone has a legitimate complaint about the game, someone comes in trying to refute it? Acid, you're a moderator on the football manager forums, but you've only played football manager once past a couple seasons?

People do indeed do that, but I think you're being a bit harsh in this case. All AcidBurn has done is provide evidence counter to that of mine. Think it's generally quite important that people try and create the biggest possible picture of what's going on. That being said, I still think that my original post demonstrates something being wrong.

Just curious did Zhirkov's appearances dip drastically towards the end of the five seasons? On my Malaga save they signed him for £19 million in January of the second season. He has averaged just over 7.4 for the three season he has been there and played a lot of games.

How much did they lose by selling M'Vila on?

M'Vila is still there. Maybe he'll play 30+ games next season.

Zhirkov actually signed in a January so he's had four-and-a-half seasons, rather than five. He played just three times between January and May of that first season. Three times, for a £21m signing. After that, his appearances went 19-17-18-10. I don't think there's too much wrong with those for a back-up player. What bothers me here is that the game clearly decided Utd needed a back-up left-sided player, but instead of buying a sensible one, they spent £21m on a player in his 30s, just to sit on the bench most of the time. And, as my original post was meant to demonstrate, this is what they've been doing for a few seasons.

Nothing wrong with this. Obviously we don't know the future and those players may well stay with Napoli for a long time to come, but they are all very good players with growing reputations and it's not unthinkable that they'd move on. There are, after all, bigger and richer clubs than Napoli.

Thing is, they often fail to reinvest the money at all (despite normailly getting about £65million for the trio), and then plummet down the league. There is a lack of aggressiveness in the market from the AI

I completely agree with this! Man Utd are the most stupid team on my game aswell. They have spent millions on players who they hardly ever player then sell them for huge losses. They also sell off all their talented regens for cheap. A few examples:

Henriksen - £19 million - Never played a single game/sold for £2 million

Ruiz - £10 million - 39 games - Transfer listed

Rondon - £17 million - 6 games - Sold for £2.3 million

Almeback - £6 million - 10 games - Released on free

Vansteenkiste - £7.75 million - 2 games - Now on loan

Davis - £6 million - 2 games - Released

The list could go on but I'm bored.

they do suck at contracts, i let my assistant do it to save me half an hour of offering contracts, and i still have to mop up half the "failed" contract offers from him, even though they are acceptable.

as united i have collected on a free

bosingwa

kagawa (i got in before they did with contracts)

sturridge

and no team should be selling thier best players. i can just go up to spurs, madrid, barcalona etc and go. hey i want him, here is some cash tyvm, then another top team doing the same.

i have seen teams buying random players they dont need as well.

on other saves united have bought keepers? why?

I have said this before in other threads.

What SI needs to do is to hardcode short- and long term planning for the AI managers and clubs. Say, every 30th December and 24th June (in England), they decide who stays and who should replace them, make a short list and start bidding, offering contracts etc. An actual must-respond transfer plan for the upcoming season. Without this, AI transfer policy is completely random, as the OP shows. There is simply not enough code related to AI transfers.

There is not enough code regarding team talks either, but it is better now than before. The same could be said about AI tactics.

I think that SI needs to program "a perfect manager" in all those three aspects, an AI that does absolutely everything perfectly right in all circumstances - according to the limitations of the game. Without such programming, it will be impossible for them to program the variations between a world class and an amateur manager... yet that is what they are doing.

Let me elaborate on that:

SI should know what will work tactically in certain situations. They should know what the result of a tactical change will be based on the information they have programmed both AI teams to have. The outcome should be predictable to them prior to the "random dice roll". Yet, once an AI team concedes an early goal when they are favourites to win they switch to a more attacking tactic which is - as far as I have experienced - absolutely awful in all respects. They become worse both in attack and defensively. Why don't SI know that their attacking push-up tactics are awful? Of course the AI fails tactically when they are programmed to destroy their own tactical setup every time they are favourites to win.

Since I am able to figure out close to optimal (to my ability) team and player instructions in terms of chance creation and possession domination using the tools available to both me and the AI, why haven't SI been able to do the same? If they did create optimal tactics, they would also be able to tweak those into balanced tactics for all the ability levels of the managers. Right now they are clearly unable to do so in all the three main aspects of management.

I am with a Mancheser United save at the moment and six saeasons in. Not noticed any real silly AI transfers yet. A few bigger clubs spent £10m plus on couple of young players who not made the grade yet and in terms of out of comtract players not seen a worldie player released yet.

My onyl issue really has been Chelsea never really played Mata for first couple of seasons so i took a £7m punt on him and he has been player of the year for last two years and picked up Jack Wilshere for £15m and i three seasons i have had him he has finished as 1st in Prem Assist's twice and came third in the other season.

Before this save i had one that went till 2032 and again saw very little of the regular complaints about the way AI deals with transfers or the squads. My only issue is with off loading players although i rarely buy and sell unless i feel i need to so does not impact on me greatly.

i've said in another post that SI should try to implement something along the lines of developing the manager element of the game and when you sign up you can choose different things such as transfer policy, media hanlding etc. so that for example you could choose at the start of the game that your main focus will be on young homegrown players or big names etc. and you can choose the option to be along the lines of Arsene Wenger whereby you see nothing that your team do but everything the opposition do or along the lines of Neil Warnock where you have a laugh with the media and stir things up etc.

This would also work for the AI managers where it is coded that Mancini signs big names or Wenger goes for youth, Ferguson is very select in his transfer policy and doesn't just sign loads of players each summer when IRL this is not what Fergie does

no fergie is not like fergie at all, on once save he signed a 33 year old keeper? and left giggs in the reserves.

why?

Well, Ferguson isn't responsible for the craziness outlined in my opening thread.

I wasn't saying he is responsible but as people go on about realism with the game then surely Fergie in the game should have similar traits to Fergie IRL, i.e. signing ex players as coaches etc.

that happens by default, i had ryan giggs as a coach after he retired on my united save without doing anything.

I wasn't saying he is responsible but as people go on about realism with the game then surely Fergie in the game should have similar traits to Fergie IRL, i.e. signing ex players as coaches etc.

My point was the Ferguson had retired and was therefore not responsible for those transfers. So realism, with relation to Ferguson, is irrelevant in this case. Although he is fairly unrealistically represented during the short period he stays active in the game.

Because its not Fergie in the game, its a computer AI with his name infront of it. It would be impossible to code every manger to act exactly like they do in reality, surely you can accept that?

Because its not Fergie in the game, its a computer AI with his name infront of it. It would be impossible to code every manger to act exactly like they do in reality, surely you can accept that?

I think certain characteristics could be replicated in the game.

For every real manager programmed into the game?

There are certain traits programmed into managers at the moment, but these could be more prominent.

are there really traits programmed already?? I think could be more prominent is an understatement if this is true!!

For every real manager - probably asking a bit much. I'm not too concerned about Ferguson, given that he retires early on anyway. I'm bothered about wild spending on players with no place in the team.

Yeah that is an issue that has been around for a bit, not sure why they cant stop that, but i really dont think they will ever get to the point where Fergie, or AVB acts exactly like they do in real life, especially when these managers evolve their philosophies over time, Wenger didnt always just go for youngsters with Arsenal, its something he has developed over the past 5 years, Fergie has also taken different approaches over the years to his squad building,

I am suggesting it is a general thing you can select so you can veer away from this but generally this is how they act over a period of time. I am not suggesting that it is replicating them in irl but just a general thing you can select.

There are these tendancies in the game couple of screen shots through FMRTE below, but i have never looked at how effective these things are as i have never really checked SPL managers and i very rarely venture into the EPL now a days, not for the last 3 versions anyway.

it would be good if those types of things could be offered to us when we start as a manager, i.e. lets you choose two or three traits and then as you develop these develop. Does anyone know how tightly the AI follows these?

Surely you can develop these without needing to tick a box at the start? I would have 20 for signing young players, prob a 1 for having a large squad lol.

It was more is it possible for these to develop or not? I have started with my setting at international footballer so I can get to grips with the new morale stuff without screwing up my main save by making players unhappy and this is my stats

http://s930.photobucket.com/albums/ad146/jimmyt86/Football%20Manager/?action=view&current=managerprofile.jpg

Do you mean for the AI managers or for the human manager?

as human manager but also how prominent are these factors in AI business as with the transfer activity that I see going on it doesn't appear to follow it at all

Well all the stats on the human manager can be improved on, but im not sure if the ones i have shown from AI managers change, i would highly doubt it tho to be honest, i dont see how they could change at the moment. In regards to how effective they are you would have to check on what teams are doing, are Arsenal signing mostly young players? Are they spending all the money they have on one player, things like that, like i say i dont play in the EPL, personally find it the most boring league to manage in, and in the SPL where i do manager not a lot of the managers are known for their managing policies, so its not something i pay that much attention too in my games.

Zhirkov actually signed in a January so he's had four-and-a-half seasons, rather than five. He played just three times between January and May of that first season. Three times, for a £21m signing. After that, his appearances went 19-17-18-10. I don't think there's too much wrong with those for a back-up player. What bothers me here is that the game clearly decided Utd needed a back-up left-sided player, but instead of buying a sensible one, they spent £21m on a player in his 30s, just to sit on the bench most of the time. And, as my original post was meant to demonstrate, this is what they've been doing for a few seasons.

Slightly different case when they signed him on my save I am pretty sure he was signed as a starting player. These situations would seem to be perfect for the AI to sign a young left back to back up Evra, at the time did they have Fabio still or not?

Slightly different case when they signed him on my save I am pretty sure he was signed as a starting player. These situations would seem to be perfect for the AI to sign a young left back to back up Evra, at the time did they have Fabio still or not?

Sold him to Chelsea for £22.5m three seasons ago. Which at least shows that they're trying to balance their spending. Zhirkov arrived before Fabio left, though.

Now that is strange sign someone that age for roughly the same amount you shift a much younger player out for, pretty much the reverse of what most human managers try to do. I have found examples of what you posted in the OP in my other saves, I was very surprised to see how good the AI did on my current game lol.

I should point out that the save I'm looking at does not have the English leagues loaded as playable or view-only. This might be quite an important factor. I should have mentioned it earlier.

In my own current save, which does have the English leagues loaded, Utd have also made some odd signings, but not nearly to the same extent.

I should point out that the save I'm looking at does not have the English leagues loaded as playable or view-only. This might be quite an important factor. I should have mentioned it earlier.

In my own current save, which does have the English leagues loaded, Utd have also made some odd signings, but not nearly to the same extent.

One thing I do notice is the amount of players the big teams sign for under £5 million there seems to be at least 4 a season most of which never go on to do anything. The younger ones they sign for these amounts seem to go on loan and eventually end up at a midtable teams before being signed by a big side again.

I can just add, though this was when I played the fm2012 demo, that when I was in charge of Rosenborg, I won the Norwegian top division by 25 points because all the other big teams in Norway, like Vålerenga, Brann, Stabæk and Tromsø sold every single one of their first-team players! Vålerenga and Stabæk even relegated : p

For me the issue is that teams start to act like Man City and stock pile loads of super talented people who never see the pitch. United came in and signed possibly the best amc in the world off my team because he had a 25 million pound release clause (he wouldnt sign otherwise). then he didnt play for 3 years because they use a 4-5-1 with the dmc and no amc. he was certainly worth the buy if they had actually played him .