Stoke City always get taken over after first season

[Bojanbbz94]

I've played at least one or two seasons with Stoke in every edition of FM for the last few years, and at the end of the first season, like clockwork, the following always happens:

- Peter Coates announces his retirement.

- The club immediately faces takeover speculation, and is brought out by the end of the summer.

Does anybody else have any experiences of this happening? If so, could anything be done to prevent this in future editions? Peter Coates is 83, so I don't have any big issues with him retiring early on in-game (although he doesn't appear to be in any rush to do that irl, mind). But his son, John, is joint-Chair irl (and listed as the Chairperson in the game). The club is owned by bet365, which is owned and run by Denise Coates, Peter's daughter. Denise's husband, Richard Smith, is the Managing Director of Stoke City.

None of this seems to prevent Stoke from being sold as soon as Peter Coates retires. It clearly isn't what the Coates family have in mind for the club, which they basically view as a dynastic estate at this stage, so can anything be done under the hood to prevent this happening in future editions? John Coates being the listed Chairperson in the database doesn't seem to prevent him from selling up as soon as his dad leaves. I appreciate changing the game's coding around this one specific situation might not be high up on SI's priorities, but is clearly isn't realistic that Stoke get sold in every single save.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Bojanbbz94

[XaW]

@santy001 - I'm sure you will correct me, but I assume this is likely to happen because of the age of Peter Coates?

Don't think the game replicates ownership transfer to family members currently, so I guess the game decides that when Coates retires the logical thing is to have a takeover.

[Bojanbbz94]

7 minutes ago, XaW said:

@santy001 - I'm sure you will correct me, but I assume this is likely to happen because of the age of Peter Coates?

Don't think the game replicates ownership transfer to family members currently, so I guess the game decides that when Coates retires the logical thing is to have a takeover.

Yeah. I appreciate that. To be honest, for future editions: if it was a straight-up choice between Peter Coates being present but his imminent retirement always triggering a takeover, or him being removed from the game entirely and having Stoke City's board just being made up of John Coates as Chairperson and Tony Scholes (or whoever replaces him as CEO when he leaves the club), I'd consider that to be the lesser of two evils.

If John has all the same club visions and demands as Peter does, then removing Peter from the database doesn't really alter the course of a save (or the sense of immersion). Whereas Stoke being taken over in the first new summer inevitably does change the save and the sense of continuity if the new owner has different visions or financial means.

[MrPompey]

13 hours ago, XaW said:

@santy001 - I'm sure you will correct me, but I assume this is likely to happen because of the age of Peter Coates?

Don't think the game replicates ownership transfer to family members currently, so I guess the game decides that when Coates retires the logical thing is to have a takeover.

This can be set. We have this now for Portsmouth going from Michael to Eric Eisner. Needs to be raised in the database forum for the Stoke Researcher / SI to consider

[Bojanbbz94]

3 hours ago, MrPompey said:

This can be set. We have this now for Portsmouth going from Michael to Eric Eisner. Needs to be raised in the database forum for the Stoke Researcher / SI to consider

Brilliant, thanks. I didn't know this. I will raise it in the Championship database thread! 

[santy001]

It just hasn't worked as I'd intended in the data as it wasn't supposed to be the case that it gets formally handed over as such in that capacity. I thought I had set-up the data the right way so that John would have more of the responsibilities and it would let Peter Coates slip into the background.

John is already down as chairperson in the data, so I've likely made a mistake somewhere else. 

It's tough to understand the exact dynamics, as far back as Mark Hughes credit was being given to John for the decision making so its difficult to establish which of the two should be prioritised as leading the club. 

As you've mentioned and based on the loose explanation of the Portsmouth situation - that doesn't exactly fit the bill for Stoke. The club is funded by bet365 so the finance element is relatively transferrable between the Coates family member who is overseeing things. It just should already be resting on John and not Peter for how I intended to set it up, and it hasn't quite gone right. 

This might be the fact that by % ownership of the bet365 group, and in turn % ownership of Stoke, Denise is the actual owner of the club and due to taking no active role is marked as not for extraction. This could then mean its passing it on to Peter rather than John. I'll run it past my head researcher.

[Bojanbbz94]

On 31/12/2021 at 14:37, santy001 said:

It just hasn't worked as I'd intended in the data as it wasn't supposed to be the case that it gets formally handed over as such in that capacity. I thought I had set-up the data the right way so that John would have more of the responsibilities and it would let Peter Coates slip into the background.

John is already down as chairperson in the data, so I've likely made a mistake somewhere else. 

It's tough to understand the exact dynamics, as far back as Mark Hughes credit was being given to John for the decision making so its difficult to establish which of the two should be prioritised as leading the club. 

As you've mentioned and based on the loose explanation of the Portsmouth situation - that doesn't exactly fit the bill for Stoke. The club is funded by bet365 so the finance element is relatively transferrable between the Coates family member who is overseeing things. It just should already be resting on John and not Peter for how I intended to set it up, and it hasn't quite gone right. 

This might be the fact that by % ownership of the bet365 group, and in turn % ownership of Stoke, Denise is the actual owner of the club and due to taking no active role is marked as not for extraction. This could then mean its passing it on to Peter rather than John. I'll run it past my head researcher.

Hey just as a quick FYI, this seems to still be happening in FM23. I don't have a lot of spare time atm, but I've tested it twice just by holidaying to June 2023 at the start of a save and on both occasions Stoke have been taken over as a result of Peter Coates retiring.

Where is the best place to raise this?

 

[santy001]

Trying to create the balance between Peter and John is still posing some issues. I'll check it over with my head researcher some more and look to get this right in the next update.

[handy500]

Any chance you can put all the players up for free transfers they are playing worse than a Sunday league team irl

[Bojanbbz94]

4 hours ago, santy001 said:

Trying to create the balance between Peter and John is still posing some issues. I'll check it over with my head researcher some more and look to get this right in the next update.

No worries! I appreciate that Stoke's boardroom situation is very unique and I'm sure that causes some problems to code for, but just wanted to flag.

 

3 hours ago, handy500 said:

Any chance you can put all the players up for free transfers they are playing worse than a Sunday league team irl

lol