Newbie Question

I'm new to the forum and to FM in general. I am playing as Eastwood, just got promoted. But some of my players have been demanding more money, and I can't pay them. So I release them, and they end up playing for someone else for their current salary. Does this make sense to anyone else?

I'll move this to GD.

Welcome to FM and the forums.

Welcome

It looks odd anyway.

One could say that these players may have changed their minds after being unemployed as it's always easier to ask for higher wages while being employed and they may have realized their demands were too high once they were unemployed.

Also their actual goal may have been to move to a bigger club and have demanded more money from you to compensate them for playing at a lower level this way.

But this is rl logics and probably bollocks. Unfortunately players in FM often choose to play for AI for way less than they were offered by you before.

If your players are demanding high wages during contract negotiations and refusing to budge, there's not much you can do about it. However, if their demands are popping up as player interaction -- that is, your AM informs you that Shmerkleson wants a better contract -- you can usually deflect the demand by either holding them to their contract or asking for better performance to prove their worth. In those cases, they'll usually back down. A lot of it depends on your reputation as manager.

You can often reduce their basic wage demands by adding in clauses and bonuses that they haven't asked for. You still need to be careful to balance the books, but for players that you really want to keep at the club, it can be a good compromise between you and the player.

It is annoying but I guess they're now playing for a higher reputation club & manager

You can actually reduce their demands hugely just by playing around a little. In my current LLM save with Hyde United.. Say if a player is wanting £400 p/w, I'll set it to around £240 maybe and see what they say. Then they may suggest £350 and I'll move it to £300, etc. Usually they'll settle on a similar value but I always find that no matter what they're asking, you can often set it to one nudge lower. If their final wage demand is still too high, you can now set it to be locked at a particular value by clicking the padlock, and this way they'll suggest other clauses. I don't mind setting an outrageous team of the season bonus (or whatever it's called) because it's rare you get more than 1 player in there at a low league, if any.

Anyway, more to the point. Yes I find it odd sometimes how another team can get away with offering peanuts but that's how it is. To be honest with you, at a low level there are so many players capable enough that it's really not a big deal letting someone go if they're simply asking for too much.