Is there anyway to stop teams from poaching your players?

I'm referring to the ones with 6months left on their contracts.

Very annoying when you find out a player has signed for another club before you can talk to them

Or worse, you are trying to sell someone with 1 year left, you try everything but nothing happens and another club just sneaks in behind your back and steals them.

I know all of this is realistic and whatever but I'm wondering how to guard against it.

The obvious first answer is to keep a good eye on your contracts. The game will even let you know when players and staff get to a year left. If it's a player you want to keep, you need to sign him on ahead of time.

If you're trying to sell a player with a year remaining, you need to be prepared to accept something less than their displayed value. Six months left, forget it, I've never been able to sell someone with six months remaining for any money.

Crud, I had a feeling that was the case. Thanks for the answer.

Yep... make sure they're tied up before getting to the point where they have 6 months left or sell. It's just pure logic isn't it.

What's the "logic" you speak of? No idea what you mean.

In fairness, this isn't something I actually mind too much. If I have a player I don't particularly feel like I need to keep, and another team signs him up on a pre-contract deal six months out, I feel like any obligation to play that player is now gone. Let him be unhappy, I don't give a flying nun. And I do also make some use of signing up a player on an expiring contract. Not that often, but sometimes I can get a pretty solid player for no transfer fee. Not a strategy necessarily for a top team, but very useful for a newly-promoted team without a whole lot of transfer budget.

The obvious first answer is to keep a good eye on your contracts. The game will even let you know when players and staff get to a year left. If it's a player you want to keep, you need to sign him on ahead of time.

If you're trying to sell a player with a year remaining, you need to be prepared to accept something less than their displayed value. Six months left, forget it, I've never been able to sell someone with six months remaining for any money.

Well, I did have some success with selling players that had already signed for another club. I offered the club that signed them to buy them now for around half their remaining value and they generally accepted. Pretty convenient as it nets you some extra transfer budget and the wages are available to spend again right away.

I always have so many surplus players that if I haven't re-signed them by the start-of-season transfer deadline, I get what I can for them, use then for cover, and if they sign with a rival, train them in useless attribute areas. That being said, I make a quick run through all the squads around mid-December to make sure I haven't missed anyone.

With staff, I rarely worry about re-signing them until a couple months out from the deadline unless they start attracting interest.