Is it too easy to hang onto players?

In my now-retired FM12 save, I was able to acquire an Ecuadorian defender and a Brazilian striker to play for my MLS squad. By the end of 2018 the league had the highest rep in North America, and my club had improved it's reputation by 1,000+ points to 6,375. The Brazilian striker was making $1.6million/year, the Ecuadorian defender $225,000 (and only asking for about $650,000/yr to re-sign.) Why does this matter? Well, now that I've called it quits I decided to take a look at the two players as they were, hands-down, the greatest players I'd ever signed in any FM game (exclusively using MLS clubs.)

The Ecuadorian defender (signed during the intial release, when non-loaded nations were creating superstar players): CA 173, PA 176

The Brazilian striker: CA 172, PA 186

These guys are much, much too good to be staying in MLS...and yet, I've never had a single team place a bid on any of them! The secret? Slapping a huge price tag on them: $30mil for the defender, $100mil for the striker. I've never had a club make an enquiry, much less an offer, for either of them.

Why aren't clubs trying to test my resolve? Do they really think I'll stick to my guns and demand the full fee? No attempt at negotiation? Here's an odd twist: given Zambrano's value ($5.75mil) and asking price ($30mil) he's supposedly available for roughly $18million (halfway point between values.) Now, in a second save file wherein I advanced the game forward another two months before encountering a game-ending bug, I removed the asking price for Zambrano, upon which time Juventus and Sevilla engaged in a bidding war for him, driving the price from an initial $8mil or so to Sevilla finally winning out with a bid close to $16million...which isn't all that far from the initial estimated tag of $18million. Why weren't they willing to engage me earlier? Why not try and turn my player's head? In real life, isn't this part of what makes the transfer window so exciting? The back-and-forth over player valuations, the lure of money and stardom, the media war-of-words?

Because you have set the marker already and the ai will look at that and not see the point, as you showed without your extremely high asking price the ai began to get interested, but they are not going to bid $30m or even take an interest in a player who, yes is good, but will have a lowish rep because of where he is playing. The Brazilian player will never be worth close to $100m if saw that on the AI's player value i wouldnt even bother bidding.

What you have done is use that feature to massively over value your two players and as such fend off any interest in them, which in turn will mean these players heads wont be getting filled with thoughts of bigger teams, eventually they will prob want a new challenge and ask to leave but until then they will stay with you.

In my opinion its definetly an issue that you basically never have to sell a player if you dont want to, even if you're a small/midsize club. There was a thread of an SI emplyee asking about it some weeks ago, but I can't find it anymore.

Edit: Found it, but he never returned to the thread after raising the issue, so I guess they're looking into it?

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/296975-Transfer-Test-Is-it-too-easy-to-keep-your-best-players?highlight=too+easy

In older CM/FM clubs DID bid players that you put high tag to, off course they don't usually bid the asking price but it's still a bid and people usually want to keep their best players and reject the bid, which makes the player(s) unhappy, which in turn make his friend in the club unhappy and at times the whole club become unhappy because of this chain reaction. It's probably easy to keep the players you want to keep because CM/FM players in the past complained about unhappy players when bid not accepted, and the question goes back to you, would YOU like to keep losing players when bids come in? Because most players don't, even if they complained that it's too easy to keep players in team.

It's a game, while SI try to make things as realistic as possible, they also have to balanced it with their customer's demands, and the majority of the customer doesn't like it when they keep losing their best players in transfers because it would make it much harder for them to get their lower league clubs and take it all the way to the top.

Lets also remember that this is a game and this small feature allows players to play their favorite smaller clubs without having to be raped by the richer clubs..thus making their game more fun.

In older CM/FM clubs DID bid players that you put high tag to, off course they don't usually bid the asking price but it's still a bid and people usually want to keep their best players and reject the bid, which makes the player(s) unhappy, which in turn make his friend in the club unhappy and at times the whole club become unhappy because of this chain reaction. It's probably easy to keep the players you want to keep because CM/FM players in the past complained about unhappy players when bid not accepted, and the question goes back to you, would YOU like to keep losing players when bids come in? Because most players don't, even if they complained that it's too easy to keep players in team.

It's a game, while SI try to make things as realistic as possible, they also have to balanced it with their customer's demands, and the majority of the customer doesn't like it when they keep losing their best players in transfers because it would make it much harder for them to get their lower league clubs and take it all the way to the top.

I agree that it's a pretty fine line to adjust an issue like this one. But shouldn't they have adjusted players unhappyness (friends/uninvolved players not being unhappy that fast or at all after a bid is not accepted) instead of adjusting the AI to not place bids at all? For me it isn't that much an issue of how realistic FM is, rather that long term games aren't that enjoyable if you can keep all your young talents for nearly two decades. Developing youth is the aspect I enjoy most about this game (pretty sure I'm not the only one ) and right now you don't have to develop a lot of world beaters if you don't decide to sell to earn money.

But I totally get your point, probably its really tough to adjust that you lose some players to bigger clubs/due to unhappyness, but not too many...

It's a little harder than FM11, on FM11 you would use the "club can continue to grow" line and it would always settle them down, on FM12 i had a few players that wouldn't wait and make a transfer request.

AI teams should probably be more aggressive on the transfer market though.

Yeah I have noticed this, of course i dont want to keep losing great players and it is a really fine line when making a game for people to enjoy. At the moment I am playing as MK Dons, i some how managed to lure Derek Riordan to my club on a free, he has scored 23 goals in 29 games at league 1 level and in January i noticed Norwhich (premier team, im in league 1) were interested in him, i set his asking price to 1.5m and not heard a peep from Norwhich or anyone else.

Because you have set the marker already and the ai will look at that and not see the point, as you showed without your extremely high asking price the ai began to get interested, but they are not going to bid $30m or even take an interest in a player who, yes is good, but will have a lowish rep because of where he is playing. The Brazilian player will never be worth close to $100m if saw that on the AI's player value i wouldnt even bother bidding.

What you have done is use that feature to massively over value your two players and as such fend off any interest in them, which in turn will mean these players heads wont be getting filled with thoughts of bigger teams, eventually they will prob want a new challenge and ask to leave but until then they will stay with you.

Zambrano's rep: home- 8719, current- 8053, world- 7003

Izaias' rep: home- 9010, current- 8368, world- 7277

The first thing I do when signing a young foreign player is slap the high pricetag on them in the hopes of keeping them in Canada long enough to play for the national team. I've obviously never had quite this level of talent, however! That said, I still get plenty of interest from teams after jacking up the asking price...but no one seems willing to call me on my bluff. In all honesty, I should have little chance if a ManCity came asking for one of my players (they've shown interest in both players) but they refuse to make any sort of move. In real life they'd be low-balling my asking price and trying to upset my player, but in FM12 nothing happens. In fact, in my save I currently have 4 members of the Brazilian U-20 squad, all of which are being tracked by several clubs, and all of which are apparently frightened off by my ridiculous asking price.

Setting a high asking price should be a tool to ensure that you'll get top-dollar for your players. It should not, however, protect your players from ever being bid on!

I scouted A LOT of players, and got a handful of the best 17 year olds in the world to join my club (European Champions, who would say no?), brought them all up with a lot of TLC, slowly let them work their way to becoming club legends, won everything! Now they have been at the club for 11 years and they want to leave! I can just tell you if I let every player go who has asked to leave in the last 12 months of my game the balance of power in the football world would have shifted! We're talking players that would fetch upwards of $40m each, who can make a 4th placed team contend for 1st place. Thank God many of them were convinced (without too much trouble) to stay on. The most adamant 2 or 3 were allowed to go, but it was really disturbing to see almost every member of my first choice XI over a period of a year ask to leave. And we are perennial contenders in Europe and Italy!

If they weren't all at their peak, and were 31 or 32 I would cash in! But the thought of my superstars playing for the other team, against me, is just too much to bear! In this case I am glad the players 'believe the club can continue to grow' and that its 'easy' to hang onto these world beaters!!