The news item nobody wants.

[FrazT]

Transfer window has just opened. Received a news item about an offer for my top rated midfielder, star of the side and the expected king-pin to build the team round for the next decade as he is only 24 now and I had signed him as a youngster. The offer was well below my valuation so was about to click to reject when I saw the second paragraph saying that the offer had been accepted as it met the minimum fee for overseas clubs set out in his contract- Minimum fee, what minimum fee??

Checked his contract and there it is hidden at the bottom at a value that I obviously thought was unattainable when the contract was done 3/4 years ago.

Anyone else been caught out by a contract condition that had been overlooked?

[chestermike]

A few times in the past yeah. Worst one was in a 2 player game with my mate from uni, I had a right winger regen with 20 for pace, acc, dribbling and crossing, never had anyone like him before or after, but thanks to am oversight from me, my mate signed him for £5million. Was not happy at all, so I always look put for it now.

[dafuge]

Yearly wage rises have caught me out in the past, especially when managing a new club.

I've spent all year cutting costs to make room for new signings only for my available budget to be eaten up by my current squad.

[SmithRFC]

Match highest earner clause stung me once rather badly and ever since I've made sure the agent hasn't tried to sneak it in. In fact, I can't remember the last time I seen it so I don't know if it's even still there!

[HUNT3R]

Match highest earner clause stung me once rather badly and ever since I've made sure the agent hasn't tried to sneak it in. In fact, I can't remember the last time I seen it so I don't know if it's even still there!

Same for me. (Edit: It is still there. I had 2 players trying to insert it into their contract renewals recently!)

As with the Minimum Release Fee clause, you usually make that mistake only once. After that you develop eagle eyes.

[dafuge]

Match highest earner clause stung me once rather badly and ever since I've made sure the agent hasn't tried to sneak it in. In fact, I can't remember the last time I seen it so I don't know if it's even still there!

I've been caught badly with that in the past, splashing out on a huge signing only for an unwanted squad player to match his wages.

[Welshace]

Always used to get caught out with the % clauses in contracts when playing lower league sides and getting promotion.. massive hikes in wages and fees.

Now, I take them out of every contract I offer, they will not get % clauses anymore..

And I also try to take out minimum fee clauses out whenever possible, they just aren't beneficial to the selling team ever.

[SlightlyAwkward]

Back in FM12, I inherited a Leeds team with Daniel Sturridge that was just relegated to the Championship. He had one year left on his contract and wouldn't sign a new one unless we got promotion. Luckily no one bid or nicked him on a free and he was the star man winning the league. I finally open negotiations, but he'd only agree to a contract with a 30 mil release clause. I reluctantly accept. Transfer window opens, Arsenal immediately bid 30 mil. And despite signing a contract a couple of weeks earlier, Sturridge ups and leaves for double wages and Champions League football.

I thought I'd secured the striker to keep me in the Prem. Instead, I got sacked because the fans and board were so livid at losing their best player.

Locking clauses out of negotiations was the best feature added in recent versions.

[Matshit]

My best own product regen in FM11 suddenly had a lot of clubs after him. With a clause of about 10 million. He ended up accepting my offer with a massive wage and sign-on fee. Plus the clause was still only 12 million, pretty low for a Spanish 20 year old central midfielder on the national team. A week later, the offers reappeared. This time he refused to sign a new contract as he had just signed one. He ended up going to Tottenham of all clubs. I still haven't forgiven him.

[Ty]

The "match highest earner clause" really stung me on last years edition.

Playing as Pompey, made it to the Premiership, managed to sign a superstar at the time (name forgets me) on high wage contract around £40k or so.

Completely forgot that Jed Wallace and 2 other Championship level players on £5k a week had match highest earner clause. Absolutely killed my budget, couldn't even sell them as nobody was interested due to their wages.

Thankfully on FM16, it tells you when offering a contract if that wage level will effect anyone else's match highest earner clause which I think is a great addition.

[Sussex Hammer]

In a previous save I was desperate to offload Andy Carroll. Usually (even in FMT) if an offer comes in I am happy with you just get the offers on the screen and either accept or refuse. For some reason I clicked "view offer" and noticed a clause that meant West Ham would continue to pay £11000 of his wages even though he was being transferred to another Club. I refused the offers and eventually got one for the same fee but got rid of that clause. I've never really looked fully at any offers before so was probably paying long left players wages a lot in previous saves and game incarnations for years!!

[El Presidente]

The ones that have caught me out in the past are the: -

Minimum release clause (various ones)

Yearly wage increase (When you are a small club coming up through the ranks this can be bad)

Match highest earner (I HATE this and NEVER accept ANY player asking for this)

I'd like an option to not allow certain contract requests by default.

*On a side note, I'd like the option to put unfit players from the main squad into the Reserves by default instead of having to sort it before every reserve game.*

[mrw072]

The clause that has caught me out a few times before is the % of next sale. I usually manage smaller clubs that have difficulty attracting players to them. So I usually offer the player a large percentage of a future transfer, and the selling team a similar percentage. I do this because I don't intend to stay at a team too long. I think one time I had a great season (FM 15) where I took over Nancy in Ligue 1 who were 2nd bottom and within a couple of seasons had them in the Europa Cup. I managed to sign Anthony Martial who went on to become the top scorer in Europe that season. Anyway he decided he wanted to leave so I (stupidly) agreed to sell him. I wasn't really expecting anyone to match my transfer fee, but Liverpool came in with a bid. I thought I'd better stick to my word, and I'd seen another player who I thought could replace him (I like to wheel and deal a bit). But when I did sell him had completely forgotten about the 50% of the transfer fee I'd promised him. So received far less than I was expecting for him. I could put up with that, but then Liverpool didn't play him and the replacement I bought was out for 6 months. So it was a bad move all round as I didn't have any money left to spend on another striker!

[Ugeine]

Only this year I was in charge of Benfica, and when it came to offering contracts to a few stars they requested minimum fee release clauses of about 30 million. Fine, I thought, holding onto players can cause more trouble than its' worth in a league like this, and I'll be able to buy a replacement for that amount.

In the summer, Talisca moved to Napoli for 30 million, but I only receive 6 million extra in the transfer budget. Turns out my board only gives me 35% (!!!) of the transfer budget. So I watch Samaris and Gaitan go for, in my mind, 8 and 10 million respectively.

3 days after the transfer window closes, the board tell me that they've made the decision to increase the revenue from transfers available to 100%. Fingers on the pulse, guys.

[herne79]

A little while ago (in FM16) I had negotiated a nice fat fee from Spurs for my Espanyol player Enzo Roco. I was about to complete the deal when I noticed a nasty little footnote that stated 100% (that's one hundred percent) of the transfer fee would be paid to a 3rd party.

I cancelled the deal.

[hitking100]

A few seasons ago i was lucky enough to be offered two free goalkeepers who turned out to be 4 star wonderkids. Moeskroen, normally a degradation candidate in my league, got taken over by a turkish mogul and wanted to buy one of them. I didn't really need to sell them at that point, so i asked for 20 million + 50 % of next transfer. They accepted and he went. A few weeks later i noticed that he wasn't in their squad anymore Turns out they had a deal with Lyon where they could swap players between teams at will...so he went straight to Lyon and i could forget about my 50 % Needless to say that, when they came for another player, they paid everything up front

[Soninho]

Also been stung by match highest earner and the one and only time it happened it was to two players! Budget totally wasted and couldnt sell them because nobody wanted to pay them that money..! (I almost cried..

As I'm playing in Swedish league currently I have to be very aware of release clauses. Players usually request them because it's a low rep league. Now I've managed to bump them to a minimum of 15m euro, and I know if a team give me this I can probably replace the player for that money..!

[RocheBag]

Only this year I was in charge of Benfica, and when it came to offering contracts to a few stars they requested minimum fee release clauses of about 30 million. Fine, I thought, holding onto players can cause more trouble than its' worth in a league like this, and I'll be able to buy a replacement for that amount.

In the summer, Talisca moved to Napoli for 30 million, but I only receive 6 million extra in the transfer budget. Turns out my board only gives me 35% (!!!) of the transfer budget. So I watch Samaris and Gaitan go for, in my mind, 8 and 10 million respectively.

3 days after the transfer window closes, the board tell me that they've made the decision to increase the revenue from transfers available to 100%. Fingers on the pulse, guys.

Well I mean the money still goes to the club, and is then taken into account in the setting of future budgets, facilities, etc. So it isn't like the money was lost just because it wasn't in your transfer budget.

[Bruce Drundrige]

I've been caught out a couple of times by inserting a decent 'percentage of sell on fee' clause to entice a player to join...which I then forget all about when I cash in on him. Or more accurately, get 70-90% of the actual fee because the player has gone laughing to the bank...

[Draakon]

I hate annual raise clauses in contracts and I always remove them when negotiating. But I suddenly realised I've overlooked them when negotiating first professional contracts with youngsters and signed a lot of deals with 15% raise included in them.

What concerns minimum release fee clause - there are some agents in the game who insist this clause, even down to it bein non-negotiable. I try to at least talk this value up a bit, but for example in my Ajax save I had to extend Viktor Fischer's contract and his agent demanded him to have £9,5m minimum release fee clause. Non-negotiable. So I had to accept it and, of course, had to let him go next Summer for £9,5m.

[trajano080]

That's why I always set my release clauses to 90 or 120 million and set it as non-negotiable. Except for the relegation release clause, when I know I wont get relegated I set at $2 so I can lower wages or fees or higher the true release clause.

[Earnie is God!]

Match highest earner clause stung me once rather badly and ever since I've made sure the agent hasn't tried to sneak it in. In fact, I can't remember the last time I seen it so I don't know if it's even still there!

I've had it in FM16. Gained promotion to the Premier League with Cardiff in my 1st season and saw that Geronimo Rulli was out of contract in the summer. He's a brilliant GK on FM so saw no harm in going for him even though I fully expected him to knock us back. Fortunately, he didn't and his wage demands were pretty reasonable actually (£34k I think it was). Managed to knock it down to £30k but he, or more like his agent, locked in 'match highest earner' as non-negotiable. I didn't want to lose out so agreed and was happy to do so.

It's the only instance of the clause I've encountered on FM16 so far.

[Earnie is God!]

Always used to get caught out with the % clauses in contracts when playing lower league sides and getting promotion.. massive hikes in wages and fees.

Now, I take them out of every contract I offer, they will not get % clauses anymore..

And I also try to take out minimum fee clauses out whenever possible, they just aren't beneficial to the selling team ever.

I find the % clauses very frustrating. As a Cardiff fan, they seem to get worse with each new version, no doubt not helped by being in the EPL two seasons ago and the incentives on offer to return. Almost all my current players have a 25% increase with promotion and one, Anthony Pilkington I think, has 40%! Add to that some of the ridiculous appearance fees a lot of the squad has, it's no wonder we are struggling to balance the books. Vincent Tan might be a great businessman in other areas but when it comes to football, he's a liability.

Most new signings seem to want at least a 15% yearly increase and if I take it out completely, quite often they bring it back and lock it in so instead I reduce it to 5%; sometimes they accept or we settle for 10% - it's a tough process but worth the hassle.

As for minimum release clauses never being worthwhile, if it is high enough would there not be the benefit of telling an interested club that "this is his release clause so pay it or bugger off"? I'm not sure exactly how it works with regards to player happiness but my thinking is that without a release clause he might be upset/angry if you turn down a good offer but with that clause, would there not be more of an understanding if the offer doesn't meet the clause that he agreed to in his contract?

[Earnie is God!]

Thankfully on FM16, it tells you when offering a contract if that wage level will effect anyone else's match highest earner clause which I think is a great addition.

That's good to know and, agreed, a very good addition.

I also really like how in this version, if you type someone's name in the search bar, it gives you more info than just all players with the same name so you can see which one it is you wanted to look at. Simple but very much appreciated.

[OLLMEISTER1]

A little while ago (in FM16) I had negotiated a nice fat fee from Spurs for my Espanyol player Enzo Roco. I was about to complete the deal when I noticed a nasty little footnote that stated 100% (that's one hundred percent) of the transfer fee would be paid to a 3rd party.

I cancelled the deal.

Really? Why? seems ok to me