Should I join this financial wreck of a club?!

[Vlowman]

I'm playing as Welling United manager on FM24 Console. I've just got them promoted to League 2, but have been offered the Sheffield Wednesday job. I was initially thrilled, as I am playing 'realistically' in respect of job offers - but then I saw the finances....

• £370,810 Overall balance (though this will vanish pretty quickly)

• £65,237,360 Net Debt

• £103,863 transfer budget which, if I reduce all the way to zero gives me...

• £47,065 p/w Wage budget. Which is much lower than....

• £325,930 p/w committed spending (very much in red font)

Pretty sure this is saying I need to reduce the wage budget from £325k p/w to the same level that Oldham have in Vanarama, no? What am I supposed to do - sell everyone? Given that the club demand I 'work within a wage budget', aren't I just going to get sacked within months given that this is impossible, right?

(No wonder the club goals for the next five years are just 'avoid relegation' from the Championship!)

Quite hard to pass up a job at such a big club, but this looks like a hiding to nothing - unless I'm mistaken about how patient the board might be with the restructure....

[NineCloudNine]

Looks like a fun challenge! Yes, you will have to sell everyone and rely on kids, loans and cheap frees. You’ll probably get relegated and then sacked. But you might pull off a miracle. Save your game before applying then do both saves?

[Vlowman]

2 hours ago, NineCloudNine said:

Looks like a fun challenge! Yes, you will have to sell everyone and rely on kids, loans and cheap frees. You’ll probably get relegated and then sacked. But you might pull off a miracle. Save your game before applying then do both saves?

I don't know about 'fun'! Did a quick experiment - blindly selling everyone they have (or trying to) that was either worth anything or was on more than a couple of grand a week. Got the finances down to spending £132,333 p/w against a wage budget of £91,798 p/w, and there's hardly anyone left to play any games. Oh, and media prediction is finishing rock bottom by a million miles.

The game does a bad job of explaining the expectations in terms of results vs budget - would I be sacked at Xmas for being over the wage budget? How much over could I be? Anyway, it doesn't sound like much fun! I think realistically I wouldn't do it if I was a manager...

[NineCloudNine]

I suspect that in real life 99% of managers would bite their hand off for the job and just take the payoff it it didn't work out !

[Vlowman]

18 minutes ago, NineCloudNine said:

I suspect that in real life 99% of managers would bite their hand off for the job and just take the payoff it it didn't work out !

Haha - good point! Probably only get 60k or so in this instance though, due to the cheapskate wages, 1 year contract. Not sure it's worth gambling with my whole career trajectory over that much. But certainly food for thought...

[Justin Tomlinson]

Exciting challenge.

 

In real life most managers would fail and despite the circumstances would still get the blame!

[Brasilia88]

You can use five loans. Get them all for free and you're fine. At the moment in my York save, I have six loans. The 6th is a gamble, but you can use him frequently and with rotating there is no one who will complain. That will save you another 100k a week. 

[TheWednesday]

I'm probably biased but yes, you have to take the job