mlpowell

It's annoying but I get it - I'm up 4-0 and sub on 5 squad players at 60 minutes to help meet their PT quota, they probably think they're above garbage time. But guess what, you're not! And if you play like crap, your overall rating is going down to meet that target I set to raise your squad status/give you a new contract. If I sold off everyone who would "rather have stayed on the bench" I would have 11 starters and no one else. Personality, ability, age, squad status, none of it seems to matter.

If I reopen my currently stalled 10-year Benfica save I'm resigning at the end of the season and managing a national team for a couple of seasons (rather than just vacationing) to let some new newgens generate. Then I'll take over someone like Anderlecht, Fiorentina or Saint Etienne. Feel like managing someone neither red nor blue for a change, need to see a different kit color in the games. Hibernian would be fun but I have no desire to be annoyed by UK work permits. I may cheat during the interlude and use the editor to disperse the young players I've collected and been loaning out across Europe to different clubs where they'll actually play rather than rot in the reserves or on the bench. I'll be leaving Benfica with a billion in the bank, they can buy them back if desired lol.

That's a pretty small database, there's not going to be a huge transfer market - a lot of loan movement is to Belgium/Netherlands/lower table Bundesliga IME. Players who haven't shown anything in senior football (youth, reserves) you can sometimes push to get 100% salary paid if you're a huge club but really if you're sending them to L2/L1/Championship as developmental loans you should probably expect to pick up the entire salary. Once they've shown something, it gets much easier to (though not from English leagues - below the Premier League they're all broke) get salary covered and a fee. Most of my loans end up to Belgium or Scandinavian leagues, they're always happy to pay 100% salary and a good loan fee for someone who can start for them (but would be stuck in my U21s).

This isn't one player, though - these are just specific recent examples. In another save it was a 21 year old striker at Anderlecht with consecutive World Golden Balls/Ballon d'Ors and a Champion's League win, it's an entire range of players in different positions over time with offers from all the major clubs. The transfer market is predictable - never have I had a club offer anything close to replacement value for a player compared to what can be bought on the market OR close to what the offering club would have to pay a comparable AI club for a player. The former makes some sense for smaller selling clubs (sell 'em up the ladder - Anderlecht to Dortmund to Liverpool), of course, but it's illogical for the AI to think it can buy star players from the richest and most reputable clubs for less than replacement cost. Taking the 21yo striker there - let's say replacement cost (if it existed) is 220mn. If the AI still thinks I'm a smaller team (at that point I was top 3 in reputation, so almost all offers were from 'lesser' clubs), what's a reasonable offer where they're getting value? 150? No offers were made above 80mn. I wouldn't think it was too dumb if they were offering 150 but offers too low to even buy a Champion's League quality starter? Even with those selling clubs, the offers are often still too low compared to real life fees that have happened - you can test this by starting a save in Benfica and trying to renew Antonio Silva, he won't agree unless you cut his real life release clause by 33% because of how Portugal is coded. Or getting a couple of years deeper with some money earned, with Fiorentina I triggered Florian Wirtz's 126mn release clause when he was 22 or 23 - the next summer offers started rolling in for 80-90mn and he threw a fit that I didn't sell him. Does it seem logical for clubs to offer 75% of last year's transfer fee to a rich club that won Serie A and reached the CL semis with that player? Is it logical for the player to be mad that I won't sell him for 75% of what he knows I paid after one season? You'll see it mentioned often in FM threads - someone's won three straight Champion's Leagues with Fulham but players still demand to leave for 'a big club' that's been in the relegation zone for a decade. Whatever influence club reputation has, it seems to wash out to mostly irrelevant. As to the original two players in question - the returning loanee won young player of the year and another award with Tottenham and was returning to a club that won the Champion's League. My starting winger won the Ballon d'Or and World Footballer of the Year and the Champion's League. They're both 'in demand' - it's simply a case of the AI not valuing players from human run teams the same as those from AI teams. Nor are finances an issue - PSG literally just sold aged Mbappe for 189mn to Saudi Arabia. Caicedo didn't have a release clause. 60mn pounds is about 2/3 of what Chelsea was going to pay before Liverpool jumped in, which is better than what AI clubs offer - and it was Brighton selling, not a Champion's League winner/domestic league dynasty. Wirtz is a good real life question, actually - his release clause is supposedly north of 130mn Euros. After Bayer's first Bundesliga title and maybe a Europa win, are clubs going to be spamming Bayer's inbox with non-negotiable 50mn Euro offers? Is he going to expect to be sold for that? I think the answer to both of those is "lol no." Bidding will start at 100mn or more.

A very small quality of life change would be your staff automatically training players (even if only youth/reserves) in the positions and roles you actually use. If you run a 3-4-3 or 5-3-2 (etc.) formation, the U18 coaches should probably know that your wingbacks should be trained as WBR/WBLs rather the DR/DLs. Not having your head of scouting tell you that you need to scout and sign some CAMs because you're weak in that position that you don't use at all would also be nice.

Yeah, it depends on several things, generally going in my favor - reputation (player and club), contract length (multiple years), player age and ability. Value skyrocketing is not my experience at all - offers barely increase with reputation and hit a hard ceiling well below market value (market value as in actual sales of comparable players, not just the value tag) for AI clubs. If value skyrocketed... I wouldn't be getting offers of half the asking price and one quarter of the market price for similar players. If 'other clubs estimated that he's not worth so much' that doesn't explain how worse players sell for more (whether comparing sales from your league to elsewhere or being brought in by the offering clubs). The entire market would be depressed if it was a question of AI shopping for value, which is again not my experience - older and less capable players transferred between AI clubs go for more, there's no shortage of transfer action. "so don't blame AI for doing something that also human managers would have done" - human managers don't, though. Even in terms of the real world - Liverpool didn't offer $25mn for Darwin to Benfica, Chelsea's initial offers for Enzo Fernandez didn't trigger his release clause but were still over 100mn pounds. The real transfer market is pretty rational (if obscene) with clubs knowing the value of players to their current teams, when Liverpool and Chelsea were bidding for Caicedo it's not like one valued him at 50mn and one at 110mn and neither one thought they could get Brighton to sell him for 20mn. The generous interpretation of the transfer market is that it's designed to level the playing field between human players and AI, the worst case is that it's just poorly designed.

They start up before the next league start date and then they're indistinguishable from what you've had loaded (aside from not having those initial 20 years of transfers and in-league movement).

With a very large database (145k players at start IIRC, first two divisions of most of Europe, all the way down for the top 6 plus extras plus a number of view only) there is a decent amount of transfer business happening... between AI clubs. Seeing players worse than mine being transferred for more than my offers is probably half the reason I sort of rage-quit.

I haven't really done any long saves before now, usually 1-3 seasons trying out different leagues and styles. Got locked in at Benfica with a fun roster and tactic, I'm now in 2033. We're the the most reputable club in the world, ridiculously rich, three Champion's League wins in the last 5 seasons, etc.. My transfer offers have only gotten worse. 21 year old Irish winger (167 CA/174 PA, I checked after getting tired of these offers) comes back from a very successful loan at Tottenham - he's not going to displace my #1 so I go in and set his asking price at 81mn (not transfer listed or offered out, just agreed with his agent). Already way too low for his ability but he's a 'squad player' and I don't want to loan him out again and deal with this again next summer. Loan to buy offers of less than 40mn - half his market value and maybe a quarter of what comparable players sell for. The most they can be negotiated up to is the high 50s. Or my starting winger - PSG sold old Mbappe to Saudi Arabia for 189mn, came for my starting ST/IF (asking price set with his agent at 211mn) - 70mn non-negotiable and that includes a bunch of add-ons. And then the offers roll in for the rest of my 18-23 year old squad players with high potential, less than half their market value. I quit and I haven't had an urge to reopen it - I don't need the money from selling them at good prices but it's the principle of not strengthening my Champion's League competitors with bargains. I'd sooner use the editor to ship them all to a struggling club for free

It finalizes just after the Champion's League final. You can have your wage slider however you want up to that point and it doesn't matter. The other tip I remember seeing for La Liga saves was always push contracts to the start the next season, your salary cap is automatically compensated to account for them.

re: salary cap, I'm not sure it's actually recalculating based on revenue (as it should) at all - if you pour all your budget into payroll right before the announcement you get that much plus a little IIRC. If you try to keep payroll to a minimum (so players don't ask for more money) and forget to switch it over, you'll have a salary cap of a little more than your minimum payroll on the slider and wind up screwed the next season.

It's kind of like your assistant's suggested lineups - it's the Champion's League final, this is the time to give your third string goalkeeper a time to shine! The AI doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between a major continental league and a random second-tier cup.

re: 3, this is to force you to use the negotiation screens IMO. I get swamped with Championship clubs who offer $0 and 0%, they will almost always go to paying 100% the salary but never a dime on top. But then if I reject those the Belgian/Italian/French teams start coming around - they'll offer money but no salary. I can almost always push them to pay the initial loan fee plus 100% salary. The biggest trouble with loans is when clubs don't play your loanees even after promising starter/important player - there needs to be a coach blacklist that reminds you who's screwed you before. re:4, yes there's absolutely a benefit to U21 and reserves even after they're 18. They get more experience points (or whatever the internal mechanic is) for playing senior matches but they still grow. If you make CA visible you can see it - and in the youth setup, matches still matter as far as I can tell. An U21 or U18 player who's not put in a position on the tactics screen develops slower than one who does.

I'd like some kind of non-adversarial mechanics beyond the awful praise being a good boy stuff. I've got a 21-year old striker I signed when he was 18, he's been my #2 for two years, now has 12 international caps and could start for most clubs outside the biggest. I wish I could have a dialogue to ask him if he wants me to be open to selling him to a club where he can start (explaining that he's stuck behind a 24 year old Ballon d'Or winner), instead of waiting for a contract renewal and then throwing a fit because I won't make him a starter. Actually, 99% of the interaction mechanics are too adversarial - I pour points into man management/being a motivator, never yell at halftime and only remember to criticize bad performances sometimes so I end up with "very close" relationships with almost all my players. Why does every contract impasse or reaction to a lowball offer have to be WW3?

This continues to happen to players when they come back from loan. I know in responses to these issues SI says 'the player isn't actually unhappy about playing time' and it will catch up, but I've had three who complain about wanting to leave because they've been denied the chance to play first team soccer. One went on loan, came back and went into the first team in Portugal. Started 13 league matches, 10 cup matches, subbed on 3 more. Agreed playing time is squad player, has never shown more than youngster even at the start of the next season.

A more rational transfer system. One I just dealt with a minute ago - snaked Gvardiol from Man City for 77 million because of financial difficulties. Won the Liga Portugal and Champion's League with him. Arsenal comes in during the summer and offers 30 million and some add-ons. I countered with 125 million - a fair value based on what I could spend to replace him and make a profit on his initial transfer fee - they, of course, packed their bags. He's mad that I didn't accept the 30 million. Wouldn't accept any asking price over 60. It's not realistic that a player who knows he was purchased for 77, morale is superb in general and just won the CL would expect a club to take a major loss on him after a season. I don't mind AI lowballs and trying to unsettle players, that's sort of vaguely realistic but way too often I get players mad that I won't sell them for a loss even though we're winning and all other indicators are that they're happy. I've just stopped agreeing to asking prices and started using the editor to remove unhappiness after I tell them they've blown it. Cheating is the only way to work around the broken transfer system sometimes.