How to get the biggest transfer fee for a player, and pay for the lowest for another clubs player?

[BARNESDON]

How do you play transfers?

 

In my mind the best way to get a large fee for one of my players is not to transfer list them, and wait for a bid which you can hopefully negotiate upwards.

The problem with this is that nobody may bid for him in a couple of years.

Another approach would be to not play the player, which will then hopefully make him unhappy, and ask for a transfer.

In my opinion you should be able to get nearer the players value this way, compared to transfer listing the player yourself. 

But my problem is that I don’t like to wait, and want my transfer business done asap, meaning I normally snap the clubs hands off, accepting most first bids, or negotiate add on’s that don’t come to more than 10% of the transfer fee incase I scare the club off. 
 

So how do you do it?

Maybe reject one or two bids from the same club without hinting at how much you want? Or negotiate a big fee in the hope the buying club comes back with a monster offer? 
 

I recall having a peak 28 year old GK who a team in League 1 repeatedly bid 40k for pretty much every week when I was in League 2. Is this a glitch? Why were they not increasing the offer each time? 
 

How do you perform the other way around, when you are the buying club? 
 

I’ve tried unsettling players by showing an interest, but rarely get the asking price down.

I’ve checked with agents to see transfer fee and wage estimates, but still want to do more. 

Maybe I could set up a note reminder to bid for the player every couple of weeks, rather than every time a bid is rejected? 
 

And when a bid is accepted, I walk away due to high wages on quite a few players and agent fees to keep my club ticking over. 

Either way, I feel I can improve on transfers and would love to hear others ways of doing this. 

[turnip]

A player's value is whatever another club will pay to sign him.

 

When it comes to selling players, if you want to get rid of someone, it's very unlikely you'll get a lot of money for them. If you want to maximise the sale value, it's actually better to keep them in your team, playing, so other teams can see how good they are. (Of course, if he starts playing like crap, cut your losses). Goalkeepers are probably the hardest to get rid of until you're at the very top, since there are so many of them in the game and each club only needs 2. If you've already got a replacement in, good luck - you might be better off offering them out on loan on full wages. 

 

And when it comes to signing players, if you don't have much money, cultivate a big shortlist. That way, if you need a new first-choice striker, you can have a few options to check the affordability of (I typically have at least 10-15 'First XI' and 20-25 'Youth' players for each position on my shortlist). Lowering prices is tricky, though. Unless you're a big team, no-one's going to care that you've Declared Interest, including the player. Your best bet is looking for teams that are getting relegated, to see if there are any players you can snag on the cheap. Don't be surprised if a club will accept less than half of what they wanted previously, since they'll probably need to cut costs. If you're going to do this, though, get in early: by August, they'll probably have sold everyone they need to. 

You can also do a Player Search for players with Release Clauses (Minimum Fee; Relegation; Non-Promotion) if your knowledge is good enough. This can help you get some bargains. 

[XaW]

I've posted this before, but I can link to it again:

In short, I had a player valued at £250k-£475k, but I sold him to West Ham for £1.4m + 50% of next sale. This player was 4th choice in my League One side at the time. Of course, he bombed at West Ham and they ended up releasing him, so I missed out on the clause, but still.

[Freakiie]

For buying players: unsettle them just like the AI does to you. Declare interest in him, then go watch his matches in person, this generally will boost the players interest by a lot. Then make offers, hope to unsettle him, have him try to force a transfer. If you really want to pick a player up for cheap then you need to continue this process for a long time, continue showing interest in the transfer to make sure that the player remains unsettled, while running out his contract. Of course this process takes time and the AI might not budge that much regarding the price, so at some point you either bite the bullet or move on.

The alternatives are what turnip posted, have a large list of potential targets and hope the AI naturally transfer lists them, as this generally comes with a massive discount for the player (unless it's an U23 one, then the AI can be really stingy and ask for absurd amounts even if he will walk away for a free a year later), keep an eye on potential free transfers and interesting clauses. Especially relegated clubs from the bigger leagues will often have a couple interesting names and some are bound to have relegation clauses or want to leave because they don't want to play for a relegated club. Outside of that, just keep an eye on the transfer list in general. I have my scouts give me a quick report of every player that is transfer listed above a certain value and especially at the start of the season where the AI will seek to offload players with short contracts you can pick up some proper bargains.

Selling is a completely different can of worms. Basically, the moment you start offering out players it kinda suggests that you want the player to leave, so AI often won't go too crazy. Sometimes offering a player out without transfer listing him works, other times you actually get better offers after listing him. It's honestly hard to say. Players that have barely played will be hard to sell, as the AI looks at recent performances and depending on your league reputation players are valued much higher. In the PL however, this results in the players being massively overvalued, so if you play in the PL (or managed to dethrone the PL as the #1 rep league), you're highly unlikely to get offers that actually mirror your players value. Overall, your best bet is just to give the players enough play time to show their stuff and hope they perform well during that time to attract interest.

[Draakon]

Selling players - two scenarios:

1) You want to get rid of him - knock down the price and get it over with. There's no point of keeping a 24+ years old player in your reserve team until his contract runs out. Sell him while you can.

2) You want to maximise the profit (first team player probably moving to a bigger league/team) - wait for the offer, usually 24-18 months before his contract runs out (because renewing those contracts tends to be costly). Never offer or transfer list him, but if a journalist asks about interest from other clubs, hint that you're willing to sell if the price is right. If the bid comes in, negotiate to a reasonable amount. I've found that around 1,5x player value is something that big clubs are willing to pay (sometimes higher when several big clubs are interested). Reject lower bids without hesitation. 

 

There are moments when it's the best time to sell. When a player makes his debut for his national team (if the nation is ranked high enough) is often a trigger to spark interest from big clubs and his value spikes as well. It is more often the case with goalkeepers (it was mentioned above that goalkeepers are more difficult to sell - well, international level goalies usually attract enough interest). 

Interest from other clubs usually cools down after the player gets 25 years old. It's still possible that somebody will come with a good bid, but the best age for selling seems to be 22-24. 

[BARNESDON]

Thanks all, much of that is common sense but I’m always on the look out for handy tips that can improve my save.

[SMV90]

If you can get one going, a bidding war is a great way to sell a player. Picture the scenario (this will be a long post sorry):

You have a player worth £15m-£20m who is unhappy and wants to leave. You offer him out (don’t transfer list him) and you receive eight offers for £12m (this is where FM needs to improve btw, have unique bids rather than every club offering to pay the exact same amount)

Anyway, assuming some of the deals are negotiable, you start at one deal and negotiate it for a slightly larger amount - try maybe like £13.5m

Once a club accepts that offer, reject the rest of the offers. Now we have a new baseline offer of £13.5m, go back to the transfer tab and offer the player out for more (don’t worry about increasing it by a large amount) - just try even like £14.5m/£15m.

If the other clubs are still interested enough, they will more than likely come back and offer you the increased amount. With a bit of luck, if some of these offers are negotiable again, try and push it a bit more (even if it’s just upping it to £15.5m-£16m)

Once (if, at all) you have a club accept that new valuation (let’s say £15.5m), go back to the rest of the offers and reject them all (including the original (£13.5m)

Then you rinse and repeat the same earlier step - go back to the transfer tab and offer your player out for slightly more than the new £15.5m value - and as I will always say, don’t worry about trying to increase it too much. Just try like £16.5m-£17m.

Once again, if clubs are interested enough, I’ve found that they’ll usually pay that extra little bit to get the player. Like always, we repeat a previous step: say you offer the player out for £17m and a few negotiable offers come in, try and up it slightly (£17.5m-£18m)

I could carry on, but hopefully the general idea of what to do is clear. A few things need to fall in place, such as clubs making offers negotiable when they first bid for example. But, when it works, there’s definitely room to receive a solid £7.5m-£10m extra on top of the original offers.

Sorry again for the wall of text but hopefully this helps.

[BARNESDON]

Sounds good SMV, I’ll give it a try.

I must admit I tend to offer a player out without suggesting how much, and don’t transfer list.

But then I just tend to accept the highest bid that comes in.

It’s just engrained in me to click continue as quickly as possible, thus missing a few tricks like you suggest.