Pre contracts offers limited by current wage budget

Hi all, I come to this forum to report this issue I met playing in Ligue 2 with RC Lens, team that has very limited financial resources at the time.

Hope my english is good enough to be understood by all of you.

After noticing the team is made mostly by old players I decided to go scouting for high potential youngsters (in general, it is my philosphy).

I found a bunch of those whose contracts are expiring at the end of the season, offered them a contract for the next season, but at the time I was offering a contract to the third player in my list, the wage limit suddenly went down to a laughable 20k per season for a first-team footballer (the current limit being 500k).

So I realized that in my current wage budget there was room for only two 500k contracts... So, the question is: why the hell my stupid AI/board is counting them as they are part of the team right now, when they won't come up and won't weigh on the budget until next season???? Also considering that I'm not going to offer a renewal to a consistent group of players for a total amount of almost 3 million per season... Am I really forced to wait until the 30th of June, when I'll have enough space in my wage budget??? Because we all know that in the meantime most of the players I want will sign a renewal with their current teams... This is so frustrating!

The problem is the board do not know that you aren't intending to offer new contracts to the players in the squad currently. You may be releasing players and saving £3m a season but they have no clue that is your intention so they have to budget with what is actually happening.

Frustrating to you i know but it makes perfect business sense.

You should be able to mark players as not being retained and the board takes this into consideration. But they should sometimes also force you to offer a new contract or do it over your head (with all the possible following board interactions).

You should be able to mark players as not being retained and the board takes this into consideration. But they should sometimes also force you to offer a new contract or do it over your head (with all the possible following board interactions).

I also tried by marking those players with the "Set for release" option you may find in the contract menu, but the board hasn't allowed me anything more. In addition to that one of my most paid players signed for another club for the next season: no effect in this case too...

Very similar to something in another thread. That was acknowledged as an unnoticed bug.

I don't know how far in the season you are, but you may still get relegated. Signing a lot of players on the "old" budget with a risk of getting relegated isn't financially an optimal strategy.

It makes perfect sense to restrict how much you can add to the wage bill before you've actually made enough room as opposed to simply intending to do so given not all of them might end up leaving. I occasionally change my mind on releasing players (and there are also extention clauses) so the board is right not to assume you're definitely going to get rid of those players and just hand you all that spare wage budget space earlier than you can afford it.

@Sikker: no risk of getting relegated, instead my aim is to improve my next season team introducing some new stronger elements at 0 cost, due to the poor transfer budget. Stuck at the beginning of january, looking for a way to get through this issue.

@Alex: yeah, but what does it matter if I don't keep my word? Simply inhibit me to offer renewals at that point (also by using extension clauses). I made a choice: the old guys OUT (checking "set for realease"), the new ones IN. And of course, as you said: the wage commitment of the departing guys should be deducted from NEXT season budget, 'cause the funny/frustrating fact here is that at 30th June without much doubt I will miss my old players and at the same time I won't be able to sign the guys I've scouted so far because they probably signed a new contract with their current teams or with another one in the meantime... That does not make any sense, that seems unfair to me.

Update, 15th january: two players declared to leave on free transfer at the end of the season, loaned out 3 youngsters, I'm 1,2M under the wage budget limit now, but nothing has changed and the salary I can offer is still very limited...

Looks like QA will have a look at the issue.

In the mean time Putifero45, you could try releasing them on a free?

Just to see if that offers a tempory solution to this problem.

I do agree that there should be an adjustment once a player has confirmed that they are leaving by agreeing terms with another club & your club has set their provisional budgets in place for next season, basing next seasons spending on this seasons budget does not make a great deal of business sense.

Completely agree - until it is 100% confirmed a player will be leaving, I can understand why the board will not allow you to go over next years wage budget.

Would a possible workaround be to stick all your excess transfer fee into the wage budget, sign the player, then lower the wage budget again?

@allyc31, @DavidPengilley: tried releasing 3 players on a free and at the same time pushing the budget slider all the way to the left (wage): the board allowed me to offer other 5 free transfer bids, but this move had a cost of more than 500k, pushing the balance down on the red.

Anyway, it is now clear that the amount of wage I can offer (no matter if the contracts are beginning immediately or in the next season) depends exclusively on how much space I have in my wage budget (with some excess approximation).

Another thing I noticed is that taking players whose contracts are expiring on loan temporarily keep other team's interest back: this doesn't make any sense too IMO, but right now I'm using it as a strategy to buy time.