Managing Anzhi Makhachkala

The reason for this posting of this thread is that I'm not completely convinced that managing Anzhi Makhachkala works in-game as it does in real life. I'm actually going to finding it a little tricky to put into words because there will be a lot of caveats to what I say and I doubt I will be able to mention or even remember each of those caveats, so I might sound more certain in my argument than I mean to. But I will try.

As a starting point, here's the situation. I managed Panathinaikos for three seasons, during which I won two Greek titles, a Greek Cup, and reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League on one occasion. This success got me the Anzhi job. I was, given, in my first season, £50m to spend, which I don't think is too unrealistic for a new manager at the helm. Incredibly, I managed to win a treble, bringing home the Russian Premier League title, the Russian Cup and the Europa League.

But for my second season, I've only been given £25m to spend. Now I'll admit that the club made a huge loss. But what doesn't seem right is that clubs like Anzhi, with vast riches available through their owners, would rarely offer such a small transfer budget. Losses are a fact at Anzhi because it is a relatively small club with a small stadium, but the owner knows this. £25m would only just have bought you Samuel Eto'o at what Anzhi paid for him. You'd have been left with pretty much nothing after that. £25m doesn't represent the ambition of the owner in real life.

But possibly a bigger problem is attracting Eto'o-esque players. I know that few world class players, at the height of their powers, currently want to move to Russia. But the fact is that it is impossible to sign almost any big names because they won't even talk to you. In real life, Yuri Zhirkov went happily to Anzhi, but I couldn't convince a 32 year-old Andrey Arshavin to leave Arsenal, where he was getting about five games a season, to join us. This is true of a whole host of similar players. In reality, Anzhi's money talks far more than it does on FM.

I would agree wholeheartedly that it shouldn't be a case of putting together a "fantasy team". I do realise that the Messis, Ronaldos etc of the world aren't clamouring to play in Russia. But at a certain stage in a player's career, Russia does become more attractive, and Anzhi's money becomes relevant. But you don't get the kind of money you should get, anyway. And when you can afford a player, even well into his 30s, he too often won't even talk to you.

I just feel this needs a bit of work to get it right.

I disagree about the transfer budget as £25 million means you could spend £100 million if you used monthly payments. I do agree that money needs to mean more a signing like Eto'o, Anelka or even Gyan is nearly impossible. I hate the fact that you cannot offer a huge contract to a player who has no interest like you could on previous FM games. It is ridiculous that a player like Arshavin would not even discuss a contract with a club in his home country that could offer him huge money.

I think money needs to have more meaning in FM13 than it has had in previous games.

I haven't found the budget restrictive. Managed to spend £661m in 7 seasons, although a lot of that was on average Russian players to fill my quota! As AcidBurn said using monthly installments boosts it a lot.

I've had the same issue though with players not wanting to even discuss a contract. I'm ranked in the top 10 in Europe but still struggle to attract big name players. I've managed to sign a few from the likes of Real Madrid, Man City, Arsenal, Roma etc but mostly I just look for young players as it's easier to get them to talk!

I think the essential problem is that players have the ability to flatly reject a club's overtures based solely on reputation.

In reality the club would almost always have the chance of offering silly wages to entice the player and there would always be a small but significant chance that the player would screw their pride and accept the payday.

Players should never able to turn you down before you offer wages. It should always default to "You better make my client an amazing offer".

just started my career with Anzhi and still wonder how do you guys manage to spend those excessive sums of money (£ 20-25 M per player) on a regular basis without selling out your best players with the initial budgets given of £ 25-30 M in season 1/2/3.

is there any cheating involved or some kind of negotiation tricks that you use or it's simply that Anzhi chairman keeps on pumping money in (increasing the budget) as soon as you spend it.

another Q: (as someone had previously mentioned it on this thread) - how is that possible one is apparently able to spend approx. £ 100 M / PER SEASON with the initial budget of £ 25-30 M, only if transfers are agreed to be paid in monthly instalments rather than a regular fee? Is there any particular mechanism that saves chunks of your budget if transactions are made this way?

Hopefully someone can enlighten me on those issues sooner rather than later...

Cheers guys!

just started my career with Anzhi and still wonder how do you guys manage to spend those excessive sums of money (£ 20-25 M per player) on a regular basis without selling out your best players with the initial budgets given of £ 25-30 M in season 1/2/3.

is there any cheating involved or some kind of negotiation tricks that you use or it's simply that Anzhi chairman keeps on pumping money in (increasing the budget) as soon as you spend it.

another Q: (as someone had previously mentioned it on this thread) - how is that possible one is apparently able to spend approx. £ 100 M / PER SEASON with the initial budget of £ 25-30 M, only if transfers are agreed to be paid in monthly instalments rather than a regular fee? Is there any particular mechanism that saves chunks of your budget if transactions are made this way?

Hopefully someone can enlighten me on those issues sooner rather than later...

Cheers guys!

If you make an offer over 48 months a percentage of the fee is removed from your budget immediately but the majority of the transfer fee is deferred over 4 years which means in the short term you can spend a lot more than your 'agreed budget' but in the long term can be very risky if you're not successful and can't bring in enough money to cover the transfer fee instalments.

With payments over 48 months, a quarter is taken out straight away from your budget, and then a quarter every year for the next 3 (36 months) As slipknot said it can be very dangerous depending on the club you are managing (see Leeds IRL!), however, with Anzhi I don't think that's going to be an issue. I got to 2020 on my save and the chairman just keeps pumping money in. It's quite hard to make a profit in Russia because of the low ticket prices but in Anzhi's case it doesn't matter!

If you make an offer over 48 months a percentage of the fee is removed from your budget immediately but the majority of the transfer fee is deferred over 4 years which means in the short term you can spend a lot more than your 'agreed budget' but in the long term can be very risky if you're not successful and can't bring in enough money to cover the transfer fee instalments.

Great solution, thanx guys!

Guess I got it now ie. will definitely try to implement it in the game & hope it all works in a long perspective as long as money's pumped in by the Chairman

Cheers.

I think money needs to have more meaning in FM13 than it has had in previous games.

In my experience, money does have meaning in this game. Took a tiny amount of tinkering in the editor with Anzhi (upped their finances although not to stupidly unrealistic heights and I think I made their chairman a sugar daddy) and their list of targets in terms of players interested in joining dramatically improved. Had the same effect with other sides like Malaga, PSG etc who have brilliant sides on my current save at the moment and splash out millions every season.

Interesting thread. I agree that not being able to offer a contract to uninterested players is a feature that needs to be reverted back to the old system, otherwise those times when a smaller team pull off a world class signing, see: Eto'o, Maradona, will never happen. That is a feature I want to have in a football management simulation. Or maybe we should all get used to shaping our own games with the editor.

Reputation definitely does play a bit of a major factor in the game, and money can't overcome that. Anelka would have never went to Shenhua, and Conca always leaves Guangzhou after a couple years for a lower wage.

Players should have the ability to sign with teams that offer a ridiculous amount of money regardless of reputation, and be searching for an MLS club, China, or a Middle Eastern club if they're looking for one last big paycheck. I think if the team actually has enough wage and transfer budget to make the transfer, they should be allowed to sign good players, not the very best since that's unrealistic, but just very good ones.

I think if the team actually has enough wage and transfer budget to make the transfer, they should be allowed to sign good players, not the very best since that's unrealistic, but just very good ones.

I agree to an extent but we need to be careful what we wish for or we'll end up with a very unrealistic game that will have very good players ending up at poor clubs just because they've been taken over by a tycoon or have money at the start.

Maybe if there was another category added in a player's hidden attributes - a 'mercenary' category - or even an extra option in his career plans which made a player more willing to consider a move purely for money. That way, players who would realistically not move to a club just because of money stay on realistic career paths whilst others, say an Assou-Ekoto or an Eto'o chase the money.

The reason for this posting of this thread is that I'm not completely convinced that managing Anzhi Makhachkala works in-game as it does in real life. I'm actually going to finding it a little tricky to put into words because there will be a lot of caveats to what I say and I doubt I will be able to mention or even remember each of those caveats, so I might sound more certain in my argument than I mean to. But I will try.

As a starting point, here's the situation. I managed Panathinaikos for three seasons, during which I won two Greek titles, a Greek Cup, and reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League on one occasion. This success got me the Anzhi job. I was, given, in my first season, £50m to spend, which I don't think is too unrealistic for a new manager at the helm. Incredibly, I managed to win a treble, bringing home the Russian Premier League title, the Russian Cup and the Europa League.

But for my second season, I've only been given £25m to spend. Now I'll admit that the club made a huge loss. But what doesn't seem right is that clubs like Anzhi, with vast riches available through their owners, would rarely offer such a small transfer budget. Losses are a fact at Anzhi because it is a relatively small club with a small stadium, but the owner knows this. £25m would only just have bought you Samuel Eto'o at what Anzhi paid for him. You'd have been left with pretty much nothing after that. £25m doesn't represent the ambition of the owner in real life.

But possibly a bigger problem is attracting Eto'o-esque players. I know that few world class players, at the height of their powers, currently want to move to Russia. But the fact is that it is impossible to sign almost any big names because they won't even talk to you. In real life, Yuri Zhirkov went happily to Anzhi, but I couldn't convince a 32 year-old Andrey Arshavin to leave Arsenal, where he was getting about five games a season, to join us. This is true of a whole host of similar players. In reality, Anzhi's money talks far more than it does on FM.

I would agree wholeheartedly that it shouldn't be a case of putting together a "fantasy team". I do realise that the Messis, Ronaldos etc of the world aren't clamouring to play in Russia. But at a certain stage in a player's career, Russia does become more attractive, and Anzhi's money becomes relevant. But you don't get the kind of money you should get, anyway. And when you can afford a player, even well into his 30s, he too often won't even talk to you.

I just feel this needs a bit of work to get it right.

i couldnt agree more with this post. spot on for pointing this out.

Yeah I would of assumed the budgets would of been been a lot bigger for the club. The relationship between money and quality of football is a formula that has yet to fully work.

Maybe if there was another category added in a player's hidden attributes - a 'mercenary' category - or even an extra option in his career plans which made a player more willing to consider a move purely for money. That way, players who would realistically not move to a club just because of money stay on realistic career paths whilst others, say an Assou-Ekoto or an Eto'o chase the money.

You can possibly assign it randomly to newgens, but how do you determine a willingness to go for money for the real ones without offending anyone?

You can possibly assign it randomly to newgens, but how do you determine a willingness to go for money for the real ones without offending anyone?

They're already rated for dirtiness

At present it isn't possible to sign Eto-calibre players. Perhaps as suggested earlier the AI should look at more than the club reputation when refusing to speak, if it's 'silly money' which realistically is better than comparable players of ability and better than they'd get at their current club/country they should be more open to negotiate.

I agree to an extent but we need to be careful what we wish for or we'll end up with a very unrealistic game that will have very good players ending up at poor clubs just because they've been taken over by a tycoon or have money at the start.

Maybe if there was another category added in a player's hidden attributes - a 'mercenary' category - or even an extra option in his career plans which made a player more willing to consider a move purely for money. That way, players who would realistically not move to a club just because of money stay on realistic career paths whilst others, say an Assou-Ekoto or an Eto'o chase the money.

It should probably combine a mixture of some of the hidden attributes of the player, like greed (I think it's called by another word, I don't remember) and ambition?

That extra option in career plans is a good one too. Hopefully SI can figure something out for a future version of FM.

The sugar daddy chairman should probably come with a boost to club reputation, so that the FM world knows they are wealthy and ambitious. This could then be removed if he leaves so the club reverts to it's "normal" stature.

I think the word you are looking for is Mercenary or the degree of Mercenariness a player has.

As pointed out previously, this doesn't get past the original problem though.

I suspect there are only a handful of players, possibly not even that many, who wouldn't move for a sufficient salary. If a club has a huge amount of salary budget remaining, they should be allowed to negotiate even if the player thinks the reputation is beneath him, and they should accept a certain amount, even if it's ridiculous.

Anyone managing Anzhi at the moment? Just about to start, anyone got any recommendations of good Russian players that I could get at the beginning? Thanks

The sugar daddy chairman should probably come with a boost to club reputation, so that the FM world knows they are wealthy and ambitious. This could then be removed if he leaves so the club reverts to it's "normal" stature.

It does, or did. Not sure for current FM, but on FM09 I was Rangers, got taken over by a Russian tycoon. Our rep instantly went to Worldwide and I looked in the player search and a lot of top players were interested, eg. Pirlo

EDIT: Seems to be the same on FM12. Nottingham Forest have a tycoon and continental rep. Have the likes of Naldo, Srna, D. Graham, C. Fuchs, Sturridge, R. Bertrand on £100,000pw+. I think it's easier for them though as the Prem rep plus theirs allow them to attract a lot of players.

EDIT: Seems to be the same on FM12. Nottingham Forest have a tycoon and continental rep. Have the likes of Naldo, Srna, D. Graham, C. Fuchs, Sturridge, R. Bertrand on £100,000pw+. I think it's easier for them though as the Prem rep plus theirs allow them to attract a lot of players.

Forest with them players?!?! They always seem to go down on my saves lol

Yeah, only because of the tycoon. They massively over pay to buy them and overpay their wages. Ryan Bertrand getting £120,000pw!!! Crazy. Not very good though, mid table team. I'm not in EPL so good to view from afar without any interference.