Hello all,
I have some issues to bring up with the MLS system, while playing on FM23 that I realize isn't perfect as the league is complex, but it is my favorite league in real life and I wish FM could handle it better. I am also not sure if I am doing everything right so I will attempt to set the scene. For those unfamiliar with the league there is one important thing. You are allowed three players who you can pay anything and their salary cap hit is ~$600k this is including any transfer/agent fees paid. You can pay other players over this threshold and can use other maneuvers to bring down their cap hit, such as general allocation money, targeted allocation money, and the U22 initiative. The U22 initiative is good in the game and works surprisingly well, but there is an issue when you pick up players that other teams have waived who should be u22 players and this causes you to have more that the 3 permitted and the game does not recognize it. The U22 contract is a different type of contract from the DP or senior so I feel like the issue of having more than three should be able to be easily fixed. Ok I think that is enough for me to explain the issues I am having.
How the game allows you to use TAM:
TAM is a fairly recent introduction in the league and it's reasoning is to allow teams to spend more money on players 4-7 on the roster to create more competitive teams in the region. Ideally, this could be used like allocation money is to buy down contracts any time, but as far as I can tell it can only be used in contract negotiations and only impacts the cap hit for the player for the year. This leaves a big issue for any Year 2 of a save, where the players cap hit was very low due to this assumed buy down FM made, and then there is no way that I have found to ever become roster compliant without renegotiating player contracts and buying them down with TAM.
Immediately Spending GAM:
At the start of each year you get an email saying you will be spending a large portion of your allocation money to buy down players cap hits seriously depleting this budget. This is not something that needs to be done with unexpiring GAM(GAM can expire after two years and is halved after one year I believe). This can cause you to have spent money on players who you are planning to offload or trade.
Signing Players:
You have to have the available roster space (DP or international slot) available before signing a player and if you do not the transfer gets cancelled. This is a bit ridiculous as there is no option to stall transfers in MLS, and the registration should be able to be changed after a player is brought in. Say you do not know if a big DP signing will go through and you currently have 3 DPs. If the transfer does go through and the player accepts your offer, the first thing you will see is that the transfer is cancelled. You have some idea if the contract offer will be accepted, but does this mean that you should trade/waive your players beforehand in preparation? You also cannot waive players until the registration deadline, but I might need to double check this.
Trading system:
The game loves draft picks for some reason and they are incredibly overvalued in the trading system. This is fine but just unrealistic. It is very difficult to instigate trades with teams and negotiate as teams tend not to counter offer, they will simply reject and not explain their reasoning. I also rarely have success offering players for trade, but that does not surprise me as much.
Thanks for reading and let me know any thoughts you have or any ways you have managed to enjoy managing in MLS!
