Don't get the chance to offer contracts

Hi there, I've tried searching for this but the search terms I used didn't bring anything up - apologies if it has already been highlighted/discussed to death.

I play as Basingstoke and made an offer to sign someone on a free. I never got any response from the selling club, so checked the transfer centre where is said 'Offer (contract)'. I'd never had a news item giving me the opportunity to offer a contract so thought this was weird. A week later I got a news item saying the deal had fallen through because I was unable to agree personal terms.

I added another manager and made an offer for one of my players to test it out again, got the notification of the offer, accepted the offer (as Basingstoke) changed back to the other team and got no notification of the acceptance, or opportunity to offer a contract. Then got the message about not agreeing personal terms again.

Am I missing some other place where messages about transfers are now displayed, or am I doing something wrong? A friend of mine said that it's probably in the design to stop people from adding managers and selling their reserve players for crazy money (an intentional bug, so to speak), but that wouldn't explain my interaction with the AI controlled club earlier.

Any advice?