fat mole

Thought I had a bug in my save as I had 2 players in my squad valued at £0. Couldn't figure it out but concluded it was because of club and player reputation. Quite sure I'm correct when I say that, feel free to correct me though! Background: Playing with a team called Fairford Town after downloading an extended English League database. They're a tiny club with awful facilities in everything. Started in the English 9th tier and am currently about to start our 2nd season in the Vanarama National League - the 5th tier. We're renting a stadium as ousr wasn't even good enough for the 6th tier. There's no history at all with this club and club rep is now around 2600. It was approximately 1300 when first starting the save. For the past 3 seasons I noticed we had a player stuck on £0 valuation. I'd get lots of bids for him of £0 but they were always from teams he didn't want to move to so it wasn't such a big deal. I don't know if the clubs a player was with previously impacts player rep, but he came up with Stoke as a youth player which seems fairly good compared to our level of club. For reference he's a real-life player called Ian Togo. We've just let him go to Macclesfield in the 7th tier as we have better players now. Obviously he's more valuable to them, and there's a new signing factor, he's suddenly worth £20-£190k. More annoying was a Newgen we signed last season. Picked him up from an Irish amateur team called Home Farm and he was starting in midfield for us. He would have done this season too but I decided to let him go after he and his teammates were unhappy with me for not letting him move. I wanted to keep the squad harmony in tact in the end. We were getting £0 bids from teams 2 and 3 divisions above us. He was regarded as a star player for us, had 2 years remaining on his contract (part-time) and in-game it was saying he had a lot of potential to improve etc. He went to QPR in the Championship in the end and slotted into their U21 squad. His valuation is now £100k-£1m. Like I said, thought it was bug, but delved into it and these 2 players had the lowest reputation of any of our players. First player rep was just under 1000 and still is, second one was just over 1000 but has immediately jumped to Home 1821, Current 2476 after moving. Their reputation and ours played a huge part in all that by the looks of it. I do find it a bit silly though, or paradoxical even. Putting what happened into a real-world kind of context, the second guy was famous enough to be known, wanted and assumedly scouted by Championship and League One clubs, yet his 'reputation' was the second lowest of all our players? He must have a reputation for these clubs to even be aware of him, and a pretty good one for them to want to sign him! Maybe they need to call 'reputation' something else? This siutuation with the second player was a bit of an immersion breaker for me. Using this custom database and starting with a tiny club in it almost certain played a part in things, but I'm sure similar could be encountered in the standard game too. Found it all a bit disappointing. If you're good enough to be wanted by QPR, albeit their U21s, you really shouldn't have the lowest reputation and valuation in my squad. I've received small fees of around £10,000 for 2 worse players with less potential this summer in-game, and the most I could get for him is £0. Realistically he should be our record sale.