Director of Football - Advantages?

[Smkx_Muldoon]

Are there any advantages to having a DoF other than helping you scout and sign players?

I only ask because I never employ one, but I'm wondering if it's hardcoded to increase your reputation, or secretly it attracts players a bit more or one that would not necessarily interested before? Or any other hidden reasons it might be beneficial.

[Neotropolis]

I suppose it could help in attracting players if the DoF in question is in someone's favoured personnel. Maybe their style and favoured position could help too in the same way your HoYD attracts newgens...

For LLM, it is effectively an extra scout so there's a plus.

[michaeltmurrayuk]

I don't think there are any advantages/disadvantages to having/not having a DoF, especially nothing secretly as the game doesn't really work like that, it just acts as an extra staff role and you can give other staff his jobs or do them yourself, or as stated above use him as an extra scout.

The advantage/disadvantages come from the person you appoint (or have doing the role) a better one should be better at signing/selling players, so if you signed one with a massive reputation compared to yourself then that might encourage a player who likes him to sign, but it's not the game boosting you because you have a DoF.

[Smkx_Muldoon]

Fair enough, I'll keep the post vacant. Thanks.

[noikeee]

They're handier than they look, it might just be very small advantages here and there, but I always have one now because

- they add scouting knowledge, get one that knows things about many countries ideally

- i let them bid for youth players (but do the contract negotiations myself), and thanks to this sometimes they find the odd gem, though lately my DOF has been trying to sign a lot of absolute rubbish players!

- right-click -> DOF handle contract renewal, is a very useful button for speeding up the very boring task of renewing staff contracts that are expiring. I often use this even with players that aren't that important (ex backups, B-team players, youth players that are only mildly promising) and I'm not that bothered if their contracts aren't super ideal with the clauses I like.

- like any other staff member, I believe their personalities mould the team personality which affects both your youth, and the chances of training progress of your entire squad. You'd want as many professional-type personalities with as high determination as possible.

- like any other staff member, you'd want some foreign nationalities so you'd very slightly increase the odds of foreign youth (which may or may not be a good thing, but IMO generally good so they increase the pool of players you get, get them from nationalities where regens are good).

If you don't want them to bid for players then take those responsibilities away from them and they'll stay quiet.

[zlatanera]

I've generally only used the role as a way of bringing back a club legend into the fold, then not giving them anything to do, for example when Karim Benzema retired from playing on one of my old Lyon saves, happened to be the exact same time my DoF at the time, club icon Alain Caveglia, retired from his position so I replaced an icon with an icon. 

In previous FMs I'd always found they'd acquiesce to those ridiculous 15% wage rises in youth contracts, give staff big raises when I could usually argue 9/10 staff members down to not getting a raise at all, and in Spain would get far lower release clauses than I would normally...just wasn't worth it.

Loren on my FM18 Real Sociedad save though surprised me - great at giving staff minimal raises, no wage rise clauses in youth players (had a couple in newly signed hot prospects but he usually renegotiated once I played them a lot for the first team), got high release clauses for most players without ridiculous basic wages and bonuses. It was a complete accident that I ended up letting him take control - first season I had no money, but persuaded the board to go out and buy Joaquin Torres for his £4.4m release clause. DoF got a good deal on the contract so I figured why not just put him in charge? The only problem was if I didn't set someone to release the second they got into their final year he might negotiate a new deal if he judged their ability as better than I did - i.e. an aging David Zurutuza was rated as one of my best CMs but had absolutely terrible physicals so I was phasing him out, Loren gave him an extension and a slight bump in wages which made him hard to get rid of.

Overall, a good experience. I wouldn't put the DoF in charge of transfers unless it was a specific challenge I set myself though. 

[Hovis Dexter]

My DoF generally has three roles. I often get him to bid for targets if I can't be bothered but you do have to be careful here - mine has just negotiated a £98m transfer for a 19 year old wonderkid with 2.5 current stars and 4.5 potential stars - there is no way I'm paying that, notwithstanding the potential ability,  so I cancelled the transfer.

I find the role very useful when an agent tells me that he's waiting for me to make the first move in a negotiation. I never seem to have success in this situation so always walk away and get the DoF to negotiate.

Finally, I use him an extra scout.

[kingjericho]

On 05/07/2018 at 18:59, Neotropolis said:

For LLM, it is effectively an extra scout so there's a plus.

This is a good enough reason to have one DoF in smaller clubs  

[johnsie]

For some reason I had no idea you could use him as an extra scout.