End of season help: Derby Co. FC, Year Two, FM 15 [LONG]

TL;DR: Championship side promoted to Premier League and stayed up. What should my priorities be starting the first week after season's end?

Hi, folks. I'm hoping for some experienced players to give me some advice concerning what my next steps should be in my Derby Co. save.

Background:

It is May 10, 2016, and I've just wrapped up my second season in charge of Derby County.

In our first season, we were projected by the media to finish 7th or 8th in the Championship, but we finished 2nd and won promotion.

This past season, we were unsurprisingly slated to struggle to avoid relegation, with a projected 18th place finish. Instead, we spent seven weeks at fifth place or higher, one week in third spot, never fell below 10th place, and ended the season with a top half finish in 9th place, below Everton, Swansea, and Stoke, and ahead of Arsenal, Watford, and Aston Villa. On January 1st, when offered a chance to adjust the board's expectations, I decided to play it safe and stick with "avoid relegation," as we were at that time seven games into sixteen-match winless streak. We only reached the Third Round of the FA Cup, knocked out by eventually relegated BPL side Newcastle, while expectation was Fifth Round. We also failed to meet the board's expectation of reaching the Fourth Round of the Capital One Cup, knocked out in the Third Round by Championship side Leicester. Overall, the board say they are "delighted with the leadership qualities demonstrating," and I have an overall job security of Very Secure (71%) despite being threatened with sacking for leaking a transfer budget hike denial to the press. (Live and learn.)

My ability to spend was expanded a bit, but not nearly as ambitiously as I would have expected given our great result and the fact that the club went from (-$5.3M) last season to a $69.1M profit this season. I've been given $44.7M payroll budget (currently spending $37.2M) and $27.1M transfer budget. Almost simultaneously, the board cut my percentage of transfer proceeds retained from 90% to 75%. Thanks.

Current Issues:

My biggest issue is that one of my star players, Will Hughes, appears a bit unsettled. He came to me in November with a completely unfounded idea that City were interested and were going to give him a huge pay raise. (They never expressed interest.) At the time, perhaps foolishly, I didn't give him a new contract. I convinced him to "give us one more season," and apparently that translated into a promise that I was going to improve the club's standing in world football, which I failed to do. So now I have a promise listed to sell him as soon as possible within the next 114 days. His current deal is $2.2M p/a through 2019, and a 15% yearly raise. I just offered him $3.65M p/a, a $1.2M loyalty bonus, $350K to avoid relegation through 2020, in the hopes I'd keep one of only two 4-star CA players I have. I'm waiting to hear back from him on the offer.

Tactics:

I'm definitely still learning here, but here are the tactics I trained and used this season:

• 4-1-4-1 DM
  
  I started the season with this in mind, expecting to play counterattacking football in a tough new division. Ultimately, I proved not to have sufficient quality at ML and MR and could never get the wings to play nice with my fairly good right wing back. Plus, I signed Alexandru Maxim, who turned out to be very effective, mostly at AMC, so I changed to include that position and eliminate the weak wide positions.
  
  
  Starts 12, Scored 16, Allowed 21

  
  

• 4-4-2 Diamond Narrow
  
  Next came this, hoping to take advantage of better quality and depth in central and advanced midfield. A midseason injury to my #1 striker, however, forced me to look at a one striker setup, as Darren Bent turned out to be a bust acquisition.
  
  
  Starts 10, Scored 17, Allowed 9

  
  

• 4-1-3-1-1 DM Narrow
  
  I wrapped up the season mostly using this, switching between Counter/Fluid or Defensive/Structured for tough matches and Attacking/Fluid for easier opponents, and it seemed to do OK, going 4-1-4 in the last 9 matches, essentially just adding one MC for the removed striker.
  
  
  Starts 9, Scored 9, Allowed 13

  
  

The Big Questions:

1. Stick with Hughes if possible? Or sell?
   
   In 42 starts and 3 substitutions in all competitions, Hughes has 6 goals and 5 assists. He only had 19/33 shots on target, was an 83% passer, and an 85% tackler, with an average rating of 7.01. Is that worth $4M p/a or so, or should I consider trying to sell him for value, which would add, what, $11.6M to my transfer budget plus free up that salary? I love seeing four and a half stars on my roster in a 21 year old, but I don't want to be a magpie and miss a chance to bolster the rest of my roster. If I decide to stay narrow, should I also essentially sell every wide midfielder and AM I have? That would pretty much mean Ward, Forsyth, and Anderson. Would that include promising youngsters at those positions, like Kiwomya? And how do I estimate how much to ask for a hot prospect like him?

   
   

2. Stick with my tactics?
   
   Since I'm not a tactical genius, should I just commit myself to playing my current, narrow formations with DM help and concentrate on finding top players and depth at those positions? Roughly, depth at key positions is: DL ***, ***, **; DR ***1/2, **1/2, **; DM **1/2, *1/2; MC ****1/2 (Hughes), ***1/2, ***, ***, **; AMC ****, **; STC ***1/2, **1/2, **.

   
   

3. Youth, a Big Signing, or Some Solid Veterans?
   
   Whatever my budget ends up being, how would you advise I spend it? Should I buy promising youth who might not mature right away? The best ones seems as or more expensive than established players. Cheap youth seem like they'll rarely pan out, and so far I've had VERY little luck with selling players of any sort, so I don't know if buying a kid and then selling him for a small profit to a League 1 side down the road is a great bet. Or should I try to make a big splash and go for one of those players who will cost most of my transfer budget in one go, but bring a ****+ 21-year-old into the side at some key position? Or should I just look to buy a bunch of solid, *** players to round out my roster and have a fairly unexciting go at next season and see what happens? Or something else?

   
   

Thanks in advance for any help. Feel free to let me know if you think more information would help.

1. If you can, keep hold of him, he can develop into a cracking player. I'm in 2026 in my save and just played Derby, 31 year old Will Hughes has 46 England caps and is a very well rounded player, bit lacking in bravery and aggression for my liking, but that can easily be remedied by playing the right players beside him. Unfortunately, I've found it difficult to get players to stay in your situation, I try to be very careful what I promise players and generally try a "I'm the boss" approach, they usually back down.

2. I say stick with what you've been doing, and look for players to fit the roles.

3. I would never go for big signings in your position, develop what you have and bring some younger players through. Don't focus on stars, if some youngsters have the attributes in the right places, but are a star or two lower than you'd like, try giving them a go, that's the big advantage you have over the AI, use it wisely.

Hope some of that helped. Good luck!

There are threads to help in the good player and team guide and the tactics forum... feel free to head over to them for some help..

http://community.sigames.com/forumdisplay.php/21-Good-Player-amp-Team-Guide

http://community.sigames.com/forumdisplay.php/18-Tactics-Training-amp-Strategies-Discussion

1. If you can, keep hold of him, he can develop into a cracking player. I'm in 2026 in my save and just played Derby, 31 year old Will Hughes has 46 England caps and is a very well rounded player, bit lacking in bravery and aggression for my liking, but that can easily be remedied by playing the right players beside him. Unfortunately, I've found it difficult to get players to stay in your situation, I try to be very careful what I promise players and generally try a "I'm the boss" approach, they usually back down.

2. I say stick with what you've been doing, and look for players to fit the roles.

3. I would never go for big signings in your position, develop what you have and bring some younger players through. Don't focus on stars, if some youngsters have the attributes in the right places, but are a star or two lower than you'd like, try giving them a go, that's the big advantage you have over the AI, use it wisely.

Hope some of that helped. Good luck!

That's awesome! Thanks for taking the time to read all that and reply. It turns out that Hughes may have been successfully bluffing and bullying his newbie manager: After all that, I offered him a new contract just to see what would happen, and he snapped it up. So he's now under contract through 2020 at a healthy $3.65M p/a. But I feel like that's OK as long as I can stay up, since I'll want a star player in the center of midfield if I'm going to keep trying to play this narrow, wingless tactic.

As for point #3, I now have a wrinkle. At some point, I accidentally clicked something and added Feyenoord goalkeeper Kenneth Vermeer to my transfer list. I recall immediately undoing it on the screen I was looking at, but apparently it didn't take, because despite the report saying Feyenoord likely wouldn't sell him, I'm now asked to say yea or nay to his new deal for Derby. Granted, he looks like a pretty legit goalkeeper, but he's only 1/2 to 1 star better than Lee Grant and three years younger (30). Frankly, I don't know whether that's worth a $10M transfer fee, but I don't know what I'm doing, so...thoughts? This would eat up $10.5-11M of my $26.1M transfer budget, and probably a million and a half of my $4.2M salary budget.

Finally, I think I've seen a thread about this before, but is it unusual to be unable to find buyers for ANY players at ANY price? I offered four players to clubs and all four failed to sell at any price: Craig Forsyth, Jamie Ward, Paul Anderson, and Darren Bent. My coaches reckon all four to be "good players for most Championship sides," but I didn't get a single nibble, at a time of year when everyone should be making moves. Bug?

I find goalkeepers to be unpredictable, they can look great attribute wise, but sometimes they just don't perform. If I have a keeper doing a good job, it's too much of a risk to change.

What you have to remember when offering players out is that it will cost the other team more than just a transfer fee, the player will expect to be paid as well, or better, than currently. Bent especially is probably on a hefty wage other teams may not want to pay.

With will Hughes. Set his asking price to a ridiculous amount and you won't have a problem. Clubs may snoop around but they will lose interest if they see you're not selling. He may be miserable for a month or two after deadline day but if you are doing well enough in the league, (as it would seem you are) he will come to you and say he's happy to stay at the club. This is when you lock him into a new contract. As long as he doesn't lock in a minimum release clause. If he tries to, reject the contract. Don't worry. He will sign. Whether it is six months or 12 months down the track

Actually, I don't think I ever saw any club actually express interest in him, though realistically I think they would. He ended up signing a deal with me that does include a $55M minimum fee release clause for clubs in the Champions League. Since that's a fair bit more than my entire player salary budget for a year now, I think I would be OK if he sold for that amount.