Transfers - There is no limit!

[bestbrother]

**This isnt new, it changes version to version, but its been about in the game over the past few versions in one form or another**

WARNING - You can ruin your clubs finances by doing this, however it depends on the extremes you wish to go to
NOTE - It may be considered a bug or glitch, but the game can and will punish you with admin/FFP bans etc

The transfer system in FM18 is essentially worthless, you do not need a transfer budget to buy any player, yes any player, that wants to join your club. The only limitation you have is your wage budget.

FIRST THINGS FIRST
As mentioned you do not need a transfer budget, so push all you have into your wage budget (Every chance you get to do so, ensure you do this... the board will generally go with you). I would also advise asking for at least 2 of the 3 financial increases to transfer budget, wage budget and transfer revenue every chance you get... push them, it may not work, but occassionally you get the odd increase that will help.

2 other big factors to increase your budget come in the form of EXPECTATIONS and TEAM BONUSES. For EXPECTATIONS, promise the board the world... it will not matter, ive said i will win the Champions League with a team that have no hope, there is very little chance you will get punished. TEAM BONUS, put them to low for all competitions... again it will not factor in to player performance, ive won it all by paying out as little as I can. What these 2 will do, is increase your budgets and thats what we are all about... INCREASE THE WAGE BUDGET.

SO YOU HAVE YOUR BUDGET... HOW DO I SIGN WHO I WANT?    
Well first off it depends if a player wants to join, thats something we cant change... however by the 2nd season, players will begin to swarm around your money pot (assuming you are relatively successful). Do your search however you do so, use scouts or dont. I dont personally but I want my list of players to be as extensive as it gets. You can go team to team making bids... play it how you would.

But once we have a player in mind, this is how we should structure our deal:
Offer the club £0 upfront
Offer the club 'x' amount over 12 months on a 1 instalment basis... you will notice that £0 will come out of your transfer budget. Now this 'x' is generally double the players value in game, fiddle with it, but suggest double and the club usually accepts... top players will go for more, but if it costs you nothing upfront, go ham!

The one caveat to this is transfer listed players, they are the money players... whatever they are listed for, is what you can get them for... so same approach to making a deal, but your 'x' is going to be the transfer listed players value.

CONVINCING THE PLAYER
This is a bit harder but you have to be strict on one hand and a bit careless on the other. The most important part is to ensure that the player signing on fee and agent fee are set to £0 and locked, no negotiating, they will come from a transfer budget... you dont have that, you cant afford that.

To counter that you will have to offer:
a) bigger wages, play about with it, but i either go max or at least 20,000 more... depending on my team/level
b) 50% yearly wage rise
c) 50% sell on percentage
d) the is not always needed, but max out the appearance fee especially if you are going for a player who wants more money than you can offer

If you can convince the player, then its job done, you have a signing that will cost you nothing from your budget... you have 12 months before it affects your finances.

THE OUTCOME
Well its up to you, you can be as crazy as I have been, spending 3.5 BILLION in 2 seasons with Bayer Leverkusen (falling foul of FFP and going into admin!) or you can do it for one or two players just to get you over the line.

Im sure people have used this or similar techniques before, call it a bug or glitch... call it clever negotiating  I dont mind. People exploit the match engine itself to make winning tactics... people use the editor to find out which players are wonderkids before loading a save... people download shortlists of players ready made for them to buy... the game isnt perfect and people will play it differently, this gives you a chance to make a difference to your team.

Im sharing this because it needs fixing, but at the same time, it can be fun, silly fun, but fun as for all the crazy deals you can make, you are still limited by the game in terms of players decisions, FFP and other financial outcomes.

You may be lucky and have huge sponsorship deals save you... I had almost 1 BILLION given to me in an Everton save in FM17, but with a weekly wage of £24 MILLION, you could say it was needed

Enjoy it, i hope its fixed come the transfer window patch... my latest Leverkusen save will be uploaded to SI to look at. But in reality you can load up any game and spend BILLIONS within minutes, so im sure they can fix it as they see fit.

***If someone can point me where to upload this save for SI, I will do so***

LEVERKUSEN SCREENSHOTS

Before people scream editor...

[forameuss]

I'm not really sure what this is supposed to show.  You can give unrealistic input, and it looks like the result is putting the club into an incredibly bad financial situation.  Does this ever get called out on?  What happens a few years down the line?  If they end up going to the wall (in an FM sense) then I'm not really sure what's wrong.

[Spurs08]

36 minutes ago, forameuss said:

I'm not really sure what this is supposed to show.  You can give unrealistic input, and it looks like the result is putting the club into an incredibly bad financial situation.  Does this ever get called out on?  What happens a few years down the line?  If they end up going to the wall (in an FM sense) then I'm not really sure what's wrong.

What's wrong is that the board should be blocking this. The transfer fees should come out of your budget even if not paid up front, and they shouldn't allow you to commit to going above the projected wage budget for future seasons.

[forameuss]

1 minute ago, Spurs08 said:

What's wrong is that the board should be blocking this. The transfer fees should come out of your budget even if not paid up front, and they shouldn't allow you to commit to going above the projected wage budget for future seasons.

True, I suppose, fair enough.

[bestbrother]

2 hours ago, forameuss said:

I'm not really sure what this is supposed to show.  You can give unrealistic input, and it looks like the result is putting the club into an incredibly bad financial situation.  Does this ever get called out on?  What happens a few years down the line?  If they end up going to the wall (in an FM sense) then I'm not really sure what's wrong.

Personally I find it fun messing around with this, so its not supposed to show anything.. but im told I should report it and as such have.

The finance screen itself shows one of the bugs occurring because of this... im passing FFP with a 2.6 BILLION loss.... why thats happening, idk,but something is letting that pass. As for what happens, ive not gone further on this save.. other saves i have had silly sponsorship deals resolve the problem, ie 1 BILLION with Everton. Others like Rangers on this years game, I had a 15pt admin deduction.

If its not a bug and it dosent need fixing then thats fine, im sharing a technique to improve your squad at a 'risk'. Like I say, you could put together a team in a more sensible fashion and get away with it.

As for Leverkusen, id also question why I could get Ederson from City in the first year... then add Sane, Jesus and all the others in year 2 without even being German Champions! Still thats for another topic.

[HUNT3R]

12 hours ago, bestbrother said:

***If someone can point me where to upload this save for SI, I will do so***

There are links to the FTP details in the bugs forum, so if you're going to report it, start a thread there and upload it to their FTP server along with the steps to reproduce.

[Lem]

It used to take 25% of your current budget to use future instalments. That was quite handy and prevented this situation(at the cost of future transfer budgets being lower). You can't really take it all out of the current budget as it defeats the purpose of spreading the cost - so the 25% function seems good. The current game restricts you going too far over wage limits, so that's good. End of the day though, huge salary and 50% wage increase is an available option so people can use it. Wages like that will kill the club in a couple of years so you'd actually be better off paying the fees. You won't even be able to renew contracts if you go over the budget - which a 50% increase inevitably will. That said, I'm pretty sure you could negotiate them within a year and remove the 50% wage increase, now THAT would be a big cheat.

At one point the game would allow you to offer huge signing fees to keep the wages lower, usually this makes far better long term financial sense whilst still allowing success.

Working future budgets from projected income is tough as these are very fluid - Get that big cup draw and your budget for next year would look very different, same if you made the champions league for the first time or got a promotion. Clubs will overspend and take risks to achieve success, despite FFP.
I don't think this should be removed from the game, so if they re-instate the 25% rule I think that would cover everything.