The Finances and Transfers

[Ji-Sung Park]

Greetings,

I guess that my ideas on this would only be considered for FM19 and onwards as FM18 is pretty much complete.

I have played the series since WWII etc.

I understand fully that my take on this is not for everyone, some players love dealing with finances and getting gritty with transfers, it's a big part of the game for some. Also for me, whenever I play LLM I love the wheeling/dealing aspect of FM. However, there are a few things that could be viewed differently.

1. These days, in the post Alex Ferguson era we see that in the top flight clubs the head coach/manager has no say in contractual matters, such as how much to offer in salary, bonuses, length and so on. It is an overall pretty unrealistic concept of the game.
2. The same goes for the handling of transfers. In no way, shape or form does a manager in modern, top flight clubs submit bids, negotiate fees etc like we see in FM. I get it, a lot of people like it, but it is very far out there in terms of realism.

I do realize that in lower league systems this is a bigger part of the managerial world as fewer clubs have DoFs and such. But for the better part of the top tier footballing world it just does not happen like this.

My suggestion:

If you go the LLM route you'll have a lot more control over affairs. It might be an incentive to work your way up the ladder this way too. If you choose to take control of a top level club you'll have to deal with the fact that you are at your owners mercy, or the DoF as it could be in some cases. You'd be told by your board how much is available this window and how much would be available if this and this player were to leave. A wage budget could be outlined and the human manager would have to adjust according to this, or at least set some restrictions for the DoF.

It could work as it does in real life. Let's use the most obvious example we have today in José Mourinho and Man Utd. Mourinho gave Ed Woodward a list of names and positions he wanted strengthened. It could be picked from the transfer layout we use in FM today, or similar. Woodward or the DoF/owner goes to work and he'll report back with news. In cases of failures you'll amend the list until you'll reach your four or five players. Woodward reports back that Bale is not for sale, or Bale will become too expensive, you suggests let's go for Perisic. In the same context you'll try to offload unwanted players. You will do scouting as we do now and your higher ups will be happy if you find something cheap in South America instead of a 50 mill rated Perisic. You could also prioritize the list, some players we should do our absolute utmost to sign (pay more), others not so much.

As contracts come to an end within your squad you will have the option to tell the director which ones you'd like to keep and who should be released. If a player is unhappy with his current contract it should be a joint decision, or a discussion, if the player is worth it or not. I predict some interesting scenarios here if you're not getting on well with your DoF/board. Of course, there should be a correlation between the reputation of your club and the people in charge. In todays football a complete nimrod is unlikely to be given such key responsibilities for a huge club.

Then, when you reach a sufficient reputation, or spent considerable time at your club you'll get to be more hands on, or just remove that function completely. I do realize that Ferguson did have a lot of responsibilty regarding this at United, but he was there for 20 something years.

It would make top team management a lot more interesting. This should be enabled/disabled in the pre game menu, because I would completely understand if some gamers wouldn't want this experience.

Furthermore I'd like to say that I am not a developer or programmer, I have no idea how hard this would be to implement. I'm just suggesting

Thanks for reading.

[borivoje213]

I think I see where you're going with this.  You can basically relinquish this control if you want to through your staff responsibilities.  But you want a mode where your interactions and relative success with clubs dictate whether this control becomes available to you right?

[Ji-Sung Park]

15 hours ago, borivoje213 said:

 But you want a mode where your interactions and relative success with clubs dictate whether this control becomes available to you right?

Well yes, that would be a direct reward for having long term success at one team. But what I am really looking is for more realism.

[Malicious Penguin]

I absolutely love this idea. 

[mmmikey]

Great idea, I've also been playing since the Roman Empire and a football fanatic in general.

My take on modern football transfer handling is "the boot room". Scouts will identify a list of players and positions, and the main people in power will get together to discuss priorities. So generally the manager/assistant, director of football, head of youth development, and perhaps arguably owner/financial controller. This is probably best described as the Damien Comolli method.

How this would work in practice in FM, is difficult to say. I guess the shortlist screen could be refurbished to include a column for each of the aforementioned members of staff. They would have recommendations (star system) based on individuals JPA, JPP and to a slightly lesser extent tactical knowledge. I know this is already in place to an extent, but you need to go digging for staff recommendations, as opposed to basing every transfer decision on it. There could be another column for "priority", as in if one of these characters thinks you need *yet another* left-back. However if you're in a situation like, say Liverpool today, then centre-backs would be a massive priority (reflected in the massive bids for Van Dijk)

You could leave "the boot room" to make it's own decisions and you could have minimal input. Or you could completely wipe it out, like OP says, with a tick box.

But certainly this would be a more contemporary and accurate way of doing business.

[ilkork]

On 8/22/2017 at 17:41, Ji-Sung Park said:

I have played the series since WWII etc.

Ahahahaha loved that

[ilkork]

The financial aspect of the game is one of the things that I really like and love to deal with.
Unfortunately for me and everyone else here, you are absolutely right. No manager irl has so much power, as we do in FM.

Your suggestions are very logical, I can't say I don't like them, but the only problem is the AI, which is not the best.
I guess, some day in the future, something similar to your suggestions will be implemented .

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.