[Suggestion] Turning Professional / Dealing with Contracts

[Grez]

The way we currently deal with clubs turning professional feels fairly chaotic / poorly handled. Take my current save as an example:

We were a semi-pro club and the board rejected my requests to turn professional. As far as I'm aware there was nothing in the club vision about turning professional. From March onwards I started making signings for the next season and lined up several incoming transfers on semi-pro contracts. At the end of the season (Around May) I get an email in my inbox saying "The club has decided to turn professional". Now I'm in a position where I have a fully professional club, but around 10-15 players are joining on semi-pro contracts in 2 months time - it doesn't really make any sense. In July the new signings arrive but they all reject professional contracts because "This player has only just signed a new contract and doesn't want to discuss a new contract already".  This is obviously unrealistic because most semi-pro footballers would love the opportunity to turn fully professional, and it's bad for me as the manager because I have a team full of semi-pro players that won't be training properly. Another annoyance is that there's no real indication anywhere showing the difference between my semi-pro vs fully pro players in regards to training.

Ideas to improve the transition from semi-pro to pro:

1) If a club is planning to turn professional it should be made more obvious, and the conditions required to turn pro should be stated - for example if we're turning professional this year based on promotion / not being relegated it should be made obvious in the club vision / via email

2) Clubs could go under a self-imposed transfer embargo while they wait to decide whether they turn professional or not - for example after the January transfer window closes the board could say "As we are contemplating turning fully professional at the end of this season, we will not permit any incoming transfers until promotion/our league status is secured". As soon as the final game of the season is played the club could turn professional and the transfer embargo lifted.

3) Turning professional should be discussed with the manager ahead of time and we should decide which players to offer professional contracts to. It could look similar to youth-intake day when we decide which youth players to offer contracts to. This should include any prearranged incoming transfers which should be also possible to re-negotiate to fully professional contracts. So as an example lets say we're in the final 3-4 months of the season, the club has announced its intent to turn professional, maybe we're in a self-imposed transfer embargo - during this period I can offer professional contracts to my players which will automatically kick in if we achieve our goals and turn professional.

4) Once you turn professional, it would make sense for any players that were not offered a professional contract to cause issues/have poor morale etc.

5) If you fail to achieve your goal and do not turn professional, it would make sense for some players to be upset about not turning professional and cause issues/have poor morale etc.

6) Give a better indication of what training my semi-pro players will be doing. Previously as a semi-pro club we would have up to 6 training sessions per week, but now I can schedule up to 21. How does this work for my semi-pro players? Are they actually impacted by these sessions? Do they only turn up to a few sessions per week or do all of the sessions still affect these players at a reduced rate? Make this obvious. I think the best thing to do would be to highlight a few sessions per week on the calendar as being semi-pro sessions that all players attend, that way I can schedule the right sessions at the right time.

I think these ideas would make the transition from being a semi-pro club to professional club a much smoother and more enjoyable experience. The current experience has been quite frustrating and has felt quite illogical/unrealistic at times.

Cheers,

Grez

[Zachary Whyte]

Thank you for the detailed suggestions. These will be put under consideration by the developers.