American that doesn't understand free transfers

How does the free transfer system work? I know you can offer contracts to players whose contract is running out, but what are the rules behind it? It seems like it only applies to certain players. Also, how do you find players you can sign on a free? I'm managing in England.

Ok first of all to find players who's contract has expired you go:

Manager --> Search--> Players.

Then in the top right hand corner you click:

Filter-->Customise-->Contract Status-->Expired.

Now when it comes to offering players whos contracts are expiring, if the player is based in England you can only offer him a contract when he has 6 weeks or less on his current contract. If the player is based anywhere else (unless there is somewhere else I'm unaware of) you can offer a contract 6 months before his current one runs out.

Hope that helps

Does the six month rule apply in the January window? There is a Brazilian whose contract is up at the end of November, and I'm in the middle of November, but it won't let me offer him a contract.

There is some cases where even when a players contract is up or is almost up you can't offer him a contract and have to make his club an offer, in all honestly I'm not sure why so I won't try and explain and end up making myself look stupid

Try offering the club of this Brazillian £0 for him and see what happens or wait until his contract is up.

Free transfers: Unattached players, players with contract expired, players on a rolling contract or players playing on a non-contract basis.

For players with an expiring contract, you can approach them with a pre-contract that comes into effect when their contract expires. There are some pretty arcane rules for a couple of countries, but you can generally approach them 6 months before contract expiry. If you are a English club, you will not be able to approach players from other English clubs until 6 weeks before expiry. On most occasions it doesn't seem possible to offer pre-contracts to players playing in Brazil - this will probably the case for a few other countries as well.

If the players is under 24 (or even over in a couple of countries) you will have to pay compensation in most cases. IRL the amount is calculated by a mechanism I don't fully understand and I don't know how accurate FM's representation is. In any case, the amount of compensation (if any) will be visible when you approach the player.

The best way to find players is to use the transfer search to search for players with 'contract status: expiring' for players you will be looking to approach. This gives all players with contracts expiring within the year - you will need to filter this down to 6 months yourself, sorting by expiry date is the best way to do this. Of course you can also search for 'expired' and 'unattached' players, most of whom you will be able to snap up straight away provided you are in a transfer window.

It is not always easy to persuade players to sign - approaching people with a pre-contract as soon as the 6 months is reached may be fruitless unless the player is unsettled or your club is far bigger than his current one. Players often like to take a few months to look at the interest they attract and decide whether to stay or not based on that. Players are often much more amenable to an approach if they haven't extended their contract at 3 months or so to expiry.

edit: I see I've been beaten to it, serves me right for typing out an essay.

Your reply was much more detailed and I'm sure more helpful though

A+ for effort

It seems awfully difficult to find players unless you know who you are looking for.

I do appreciate the help.

A few other questions. What does "unattached" mean exactly? And why can I sometimes sign awesome youth players from abroad with no fees, but I have to pay a lot for good youth players at home?

Unattached is a player who doesn't currently have a club.

It can be tricky to find players, but it has to be considered that in real life a manager doesn't go and chase after every single player whose contract is about to run out. There are filters you can use in the player search to narrow things down a bit though, for example "contract:expiring", "based:is not England" and then sorting by contract expiry will give you all the players you are likely to be able to approach. If you have a poor scouting network, only high reputation players or players from places nearby will come up in the search, by the way. Scouting is definitely the way I find the most useful.

Youth players: the fees will depend on the age and the country. I'm not sure which countries are left from which youth players can be poached without compensation. Certainly within the EU you will usually have to pay compensation. The fees seem a lot more realistic on this version than previous FMs. They would generally be set by an independent tribunal in real life - FM magically works this out beforehand to avoid a nasty surprise and for ease of transfer budget planning etc.

It is useful to consider that you can still negotiate with a club for one of their youth players on terms that may well be more favourable to you than the compensation figure you would have to pay should you directly approach the player.

...And why can I sometimes sign awesome youth players from abroad with no fees, but I have to pay a lot for good youth players at home?

clubs have a heavy domestic bias when signing players, and also the greatest knowledge of the domestic player market - players are also far more likely to sign (in general) for teams of their own nationality.

pelicanstuff getting in there quickly this time

Easy

You can only sign an expiring player for free if the player play outside England, Italy and Spain because these 3 country make a rules to avoid free transfer

That's why Liverpool can't sign Barry even his contract will expired soon