It was good for one season

I thought I would try my hand at managing my local club in the lower (non-)leagues, for a change.

The first season was a lot of fun, and I was particularly pleased to discover that an attempt to implement non-contracts into FM has been made, though I was a little disappointed to find I could still offer contracts longer than one and even two seasons! I'm not sure there is much of that going on in part-time football in real life, but I know one or two League clubs have had to set one-year contract limits.

Obviously I was delighted to win promotion to the Blue Square Bet Premier in my first season, and even more so, that my modest players are capable of a decent performance at that level. Unfortunately half of my team (five players) acquired a common agent around Christmas in the first (BSB North) season.

Do part-time players really employ agents? Three months into a two-season contract?

As I am able to pay slightly more in wages (my transfer/wage budget has increased from 5k to 8k) I thought I would reward my core players as they now have less than a season left on their contracts (two have even requested improved deals). But now I have become extremely frustrated at FM because the agent wants almost 7k agent fee for each deal - and these are part-time contracts too! The agent has an 18 stat for agent fees - he is demanding to be paid more than my entire transfer/wage budget on each deal! I doubt any club around that level, fully pro or not, would pay even a fraction of that. This agent alone will be getting a combined total of 35k just for the sake of extending the contracts of the players I already have! The players themselves are only getting 8k pa - although the agent is now trying to get contracts 4 or 5 times that for each player - part-time ones!).

In a league where one-year contracts are quite a luxury, and transfer fees are very rare, this is a ridiculous scenario. Due to this absurd agent, I can't see anyway to keep these players at the club, (not maintaining any illusion of realism anyway).

Bad agent kills game in season two

Conference Premier is now largely a professional league. Where as it used to be the minority that were professional, it's now the minority that are semi professional.

Therefore, most players in that division will have full time deals, possibly for more than one season and the top players in the division may well have agents.

The scenario at your present club does seem to be stretching it too far however.

My team is in the BSP from the BSS and only 1 of them has an agent

Unfortunately, plenty of semi-pro players have agents in real life - occasionally causing players to move clubs who otherwise wouldn't. That said, 8 grand per extension seems ludicrous, I certainly didn't pay anything like that in my dealings when in BSS/BSP

I find the easiest way to cut the agent fee is to give it to the player, unless the agent wants his money (Generally this means he has said, "My client wants to ensure I am paid in full") then if his fee is 8k, reduce it to 1k (possibly 2k), and add 4k onto the players signing fee, or 1-200 onto the weekly wages and you are likely to make a slight reduction in the upfront cost, but it won't always work, and I agree for the level that agent fee is a bit steep.

I haven't managed at that level, but this tends to be how I deal with agents, reduce the amount paid to the agent, increase the amount due to the player, and see if I can reduce the overall signing fee a bit like that. My club now has a bank balance of some $800m, so my years of haggling with agents seems to have paid off, now I will still try to drive a hard bargain, but for a good player if the agent demands a bunch of money I make sure the length of the contract is long, so I won't have to deal with the asshole again for a long time! And any time one of my players (youth incl.) fire their agent I look to renew their contract immediately. Like I said, it looks like my approach has been a fairly economical one.

I find the easiest way to cut the agent fee is to give it to the player, unless the agent wants his money (Generally this means he has said, "My client wants to ensure I am paid in full") then if his fee is 8k, reduce it to 1k (possibly 2k), and add 4k onto the players signing fee, or 1-200 onto the weekly wages and you are likely to make a slight reduction in the upfront cost, but it won't always work, and I agree for the level that agent fee is a bit steep.