Can't buy a player despite offering more than estimated cost from all of my (quality) scouts

Hi all,

This has been bugging me for a good chunk of my current summer transfer window...

I am managing a defending CL winner and am trying to buy a player. My scouts -- a bunch of them, all with very good ratings, produced report cards and watched the guy many times. He's an excellent player and the scouts are suggesting he's going to cost a large amount (45M-52M GBP), but the fact that they are actually quoting an amount suggests they believe the transfer to be feasible...

I offer that amount. I offer up to 20M more than that amount. My offers are rejected flat out.

The other club isn't in my division and is less successful. We don't have a rivalry. Their manager doesn't hate me, and we've done business in the past. I actually have sold them good players. So I am not sure why they don't want to negotiate, and why my scouts are wrong. I've never had this problem before...

By the way, the guy is on far lower wages that he'd ask for if I signed him, so the financial incentive for him is there. I've told the media about how much I like him, and his responses have been positive (though not the most enthusiastic).

Any ideas? What could make scouts be so wrong? What is the attribute or combination of attributes that determines the scouts' ability to get the financial part of his report correctly? Thanks!

That was my initial thought too. So now I am basically commissioning new scouting reports daily on this guy and submitting bids immediately after.

They vary quite a bit scout to scout, which is itself very unusual. I have a solid scouting staff and their reports are usually almost identical. But even submitting a bid higher than the maximum upper range across all scouting reports the same day as that report is received still leads to a rejection.

Instead of making a bid ask the club how much they want and see what they come back with.

Have you bid for this player previously and for whatever reason the deal was cancelled?

They reject enquiries. But this isn't uncommon. Clubs often reject enquiries for players who have an "estimated cost" from a scout, but you still bid that amount and after a little negotiation get your offer accepted.

And no, I haven't agreed a deal for the player before.

I'm only guessing but do you have a bad relationship with the opposition manager?

Is he on your hated list?

Thanks for your suggestions. Should I ask to get this moved to the Bugs forum? Is there any benefit to me uploading a savegame?

I realize it's not a bug in the "I'm clicking it but it won't do anything" sense, this is a much more complicated situation, and it's possible that nothing is wrong, but I've never encountered a transfer impediment like this in a decade of playing FM...

EDIT: Just saw your post. You answered my question. How do I upload a savegame?

EDIT2: Nevermind, found the instructions in the bug forum. Uploading a ZIP right now called "elenev - scouts cost wrong.zip" It's an autosave from just after this problem started happening -- player with ID 1394739272 (Guilherme, plays for FC Porto). I know we should upload autosaves from before, but this is the earliest save I have and the problem should be easy to reproduce. By the way, scouts' valuations of other players are correct, and I've bought them since without a problem.

Hi Alex, have you had a chance to take a look at this yet?

No worries. I've played almost til transfer deadline day and don't want to go further on the offchance this will miraculously resolve itself and I'll get my target after all... But I could use the productivity boost from taking a break from FM for a couple weeks anyway.