How do you set/calculate wage budgets to set a wage structure?

[robot_9x3]

Hello,
sorry if this is the wrong subgroup to post this in but I do not know where else this would fit.

As the title stays, I tried to calculate a wagestructure adhereing to the wagebudget. But I seem to have that wrong.

For example: I have 15.500 per week.
I calculated a little bit to have “limits”, just to have a wage-structure, my problem is my players want way more than I have calculated them to receive. So after the first negotiation round they get yellow, last chance...

Image: my calculated wages, colored column totalbudget allocation per player(wage and boni)

Sorry its german and english mixed.

No players in the youth set up so no money allocated. (otherwise I would do the standard 90%- > Firstteam, 10%-> second/youth team)

The board has these values as max base wage

Superstar: 2000
Key: 1600
First Choice: 1200
Rotation/ImpactSub: 1000
Fringe/SecondTeam: 775

I know not everyone is supposed to get the max but it should be possible right? It seems to be the max and more is what players aim for.

So with how many players is the Board calculating?
I like a 25 player squad 22 players who are good enough to at least play decent 3 flexible guys to fill wholes

I would say Status to player wise the ratio should be something like this no?
Superstar:1
Keyplayers: 3
FirstChoice:7
Rotation/ImpacSub:7
Fringe: 7

So I have 11 players who expect to start most of the time 7 who know they may start/sit on the bench and 7 to fill holes

But when I calculate the max cost per board that we would reach:

2000+4800+8400+7000+5425 = 27.625
which is like 11.100 above the wage cap just with base wages no goalbonus nothing

Has anyone a tip on how I could calculate wagecaps that are realistic and within the budget and not too low like mine?

[DarJ]

This is the wage structure for my team and although it's not as detailed as yours because in here I don't account for bonuses however even with the base wage it's flexible so looking at the screenshot a player on star player contract can earn between £416000 per year and £563000 per year which is huge, there is a difference of about £147000 per year so that helps I think. One thing I've done is to keep this as low as possible and made it in a way that if you're going up in importance you get the same wage increase so let's say someone is going from Fringe Player to Squad Player, his wage will go up by 5%, it wold still be 5% increase for another player going from Important Player to Star Player.

Most clubs are at the wage limit when you take over them so I do this as soon as I start a save using the IRL wages and I don't look at it in terms of "we need to have 1 star player 2 regular starters etc.", most of the players sit between regular starter and fringe player anyway. I just set it in a way it's close enough to what it is when I started the save and generally you will never go above your wage budget unless you sign half of your team on star player wages 

The reason I didn't add bonuses is because when I initially started doing this, I would have a lot of wage budget to spare so when trying to renew contracts or sign new players they would ask for way too much so to solve that I keep the base wage very rigid and I'm flexible with bonus but I still miss out on very good players because sometimes they just don't accept.

Some "tricks" I use is I offer the player a % of the transfer when he's sold (I manage my teams as developments clubs so I buy u20 players. after few years money is not that important for me so I can afford to give the players a % of the transfer fee. I also put a release clause if I really want the player and I think the AI reads it as having a way out so they're not stuck at the club. Finally, I give high performance bonuses since they'll only get them if they perform so defenders will have clean sheet bonus, assist bonus too for fullbacks etc.

Edited April 28, 2022 by DarJ

[robot_9x3]

@DarJ if I understand you correct, you look at the existing players and their contracts to determine the base wage range per status? how do you scale it up or down if your wagebudget changes?

I do still know the old 22-player squad rule
4keyplayers and above = (wagebudget*0,3) /4. so every keyplayer and above (at most 4) can get 1/4 of 30% of the wagebudget.
7firstteam players = (wagebudget*0,3)/7. so rotation and above can earn 1/7 of 30% of the wagebudget.
11 fringeplayers  = (wagebudget*0,3)/11. So fringeplayers get 1/11 of 30% of the wagebudget

That would calculate wage limits close to what I have done, but the players still demand way more. I am a small team, I can't replace as many players and I can't pay them to keep them.
A Keyplayer could get up to 1278(bonus included). FM has the nice feature telling us how much this player with the agreed status would earn per week with the wage and bonuses selected during negotiations so I try to hit that?
But again they demand way more. And the board has a max basewage(so no bonus included) set which is also 800 more. I would like to know what to do to pay wages without crippling the club, and more importantly how I can scale contracts later on, that was the main idea behind the spreadsheet.

My spreadsheet though seems to be off by quite a large margin. Are Bonuses such as appearance and goal bonus not included in the wage budget? So am I to tight by factoring them in there? The negotions tool suggests otherwise...

[DarJ]

35 minutes ago, robot_9x3 said:

you look at the existing players and their contracts to determine the base wage range per status?

Yes, I just export the data from the game directly then use some tools in excel to clean it up 

35 minutes ago, robot_9x3 said:

how do you scale it up or down if your wagebudget changes?

If you look at the table on the bottom I have the old wage budget and the new budget then the percentage difference. Then if you look at the table far right, on top of it it shows 0% and that'd because this is the first season. in the second season I'll just add or subtract the percentage difference and it will adjust that table automatically for me so I don't have to make a new sheet every year.

35 minutes ago, robot_9x3 said:

My spreadsheet though seems to be off by quite a large margin.

yours is calculated per week and mine is per year and I don't consider appearance fee or bonuses in the sheet 

 

35 minutes ago, robot_9x3 said:

FM has the nice feature telling us how much this player with the agreed status would earn per week with the wage and bonuses selected during negotiations so I try to hit that?

Yes I try to hit it but with limits. This is what I do, I give my base wage then I try to estimate how many games on average a player will play if he's fully feet then based on that I decide the appearance fee; for example in another save I've l've limited myself to 5K used and unused fee and best case scenario the player will earn 200K more.  Then there a performance based bonuses like goal bonus etc. with these I don't mind paying much because the only get them if they perform then at the end of the season I look at the best performer and decide how to adjust it going forward so if my top striker scored 20 goals and I was giving him 10k per goal that's an extra 200K which is way too much so going forward I'll reduce this. Another bonus I like to give is team of the year because even when I'm the best team in the league I might have 5 players max on there so I just go high on this.

By sticking to a wage structure like this you will miss out on a lot of good players but I don't really mind because I don't really sign players for big money anyway so I'm missing out on a lot already 

Edited April 28, 2022 by DarJ

[fc.cadoni]

Financial > Wages

From there, game will advice you based on your finances. From Star to Youngster.

[DarJ]

3 minutes ago, fc.cadoni said:

Financial > Wages

From there, game will advice you based on your finances. From Star to Youngster.

Not really, it just shows what you already have then on the far right it suggests the max when you add all the players in that particular group but that's not useful IMO

[fc.cadoni]

2 minutes ago, DarJ said:

Not really, it just shows what you already have then on the far right it suggests the max when you add all the players in that particular group but that's not useful IMO

I see, but it is max average which is helpful for me.

[robot_9x3]

@fc.cadoni I know about the wages page, where else would I have gotten the max Wage my board sets?

But thats my problem the max wage doesn't make sense to me.

Again example with the 25 player squad I prefer even with 22 it would be too weird.

 

Sure you could say that is my fault for being this focused on the squad status amount but I think that is close to a healthy assembled squad.

But unless most of my player are fringe players I will exceed the wagebudget set.
Even if I like I did here, I said everyone only gets the mid range or the low range for the squadstatus limits we exceed the budget (I chose the max wage for the status below as the lower limit)
With the low lmit we can of course assume that includes bonus payments so we won't pay put everything, but can we really assume players will accept the lowest wage possible?

So I can't trust the board. But my calculations is so far below that of the board and what the players expect that I can't keep players and keep the wagebudget.
 

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by robot_9x3