No one's interested in my players

[TOMetz]

Hi all

Is it just me or are a lot of you struggling with getting other clubs interested in your players? I'm currently managing a bigger club in a mediocre European league so, to be sustainable, I have to be a selling club.

We're doing great in the league, nearly all my players have avg. ratings of 7 and much higher. Two of the top three goalscorers are on my team, for instance, one player won player of the year, another one is talent of the year and so on. Yet, there's not a single team showing any interest in my players whereas, in real life, it's a huge struggle to fend off the interested bigger teams from abroad.

At first I assumed it was because of the covid-related financial issues everyone experiences at the start of every new save, but the same problem goes on and on after each transfer window. I don't want to offer ALL of my players to other clubs and get peanuts in return. It should be more of a challenge every transfer window to keep your best players but there's no challenge at all.

[Baodan]

Yeah this is nothing new and may be related to the number of active clubs vs players you have loaded in the database.

[TOMetz]

By active clubs you mean clubs in playable leagues or are clubs in watch-only leagues active as well?

[grnetfreak]

I'm facing the exact same problem. It's usualy just Udinese ( I'm not in Italy ) interested in my players for a bit but never bids, even when I transfer-list a few. Noone wants them ( 2nd year ) and there's always the warning:

"Difficult to find a club due to salary demands" - And it's players with 500k-800k / year salaries with a decent first season and good value ( and decent rep ). No one wants them, even for free or with salary paid by me!

My DB is the usual I do, 2 leagues playable, 13 in view only and a large custom db with 63k players loaded.

[HUNT3R]

Just now, grnetfreak said:

My DB is the usual I do, 2 leagues playable, 13 in view only and a large custom db with 63k players loaded.

The problem with this sort of setup is that you only have 2 loaded leagues but a LOT of players. In terms of supply and demand, there's a lot of players to choose from here. This gets better and better as a save moves forward (with player numbers starting to balance out) but early on, it becomes a problem. There will always be someone cheaper with that many options.

Keep in mind that the transfer activity of clubs who are in unloaded leagues are also lower, generally speaking. The high rep clubs will still be okay though.

[trevjim]

Been something that I've found with the game since the championship manager games. 

 

Is got better in recent years but still an issue

[grnetfreak]

1 hour ago, HUNT3R said:

The problem with this sort of setup is that you only have 2 loaded leagues but a LOT of players. In terms of supply and demand, there's a lot of players to choose from here. This gets better and better as a save moves forward (with player numbers starting to balance out) but early on, it becomes a problem. There will always be someone cheaper with that many options.

Keep in mind that the transfer activity of clubs who are in unloaded leagues are also lower, generally speaking. The high rep clubs will still be okay though.

I hear what you're saying but this was never an issue with older versions ( I have over 4k hours throughout the games ) - The view-only leagues were in less detail and you couldn't manage teams there but they still count as "active". 

I'll try a new save with multiple playable nations and try for a 50k DB to test things.

[Brother Ben]

I always play with a small database and don't find it hard to sell players.  Supply and demand I guess.  This is purely anecdotal though I have no evidence

[TOMetz]

5 hours ago, HUNT3R said:

The problem with this sort of setup is that you only have 2 loaded leagues but a LOT of players. In terms of supply and demand, there's a lot of players to choose from here. This gets better and better as a save moves forward (with player numbers starting to balance out) but early on, it becomes a problem. There will always be someone cheaper with that many options.

Keep in mind that the transfer activity of clubs who are in unloaded leagues are also lower, generally speaking. The high rep clubs will still be okay though.

During a save, you can add new leagues and they will be added when the current season in that league ends. Will that also positively affect the demand for players?

[HUNT3R]

17 hours ago, grnetfreak said:

The view-only leagues were in less detail and you couldn't manage teams there but they still count as "active". 

View only leagues aren't active leagues. They just allow you to view league tables etc.

13 hours ago, TOMetz said:

During a save, you can add new leagues and they will be added when the current season in that league ends. Will that also positively affect the demand for players?

Well, you should have more active clubs, so it should help, but it depends on the number of players loaded vs the number of active clubs. Keep in mind that the first season will have fewer transfers in general.

[Zemahh]

I assume part of this has to do with how the effects of COVID-19 are coded in:

Quote

The most visible knock-on effect of this will be transfers; we’ve rewritten chunks of our transfer system to ensure that while superstars and wonderkids will retain their value, FM21 will see more ‘loan to buy’ offers, the value of mid-range players dropping and clubs in real financial trouble trying to move players on a more regular basis.

https://www.footballmanager.com/news/our-approach-covid-19-fm21

I'm wondering whether this normalizes eventually and offloading players becomes easier again. I'm currently managing in Ligue 2 and although the player quality is understandably low, I didn't manage to sell a single player in my first transfer window (19 Playable nations loaded).