I'm lost for words

[Johnny Ace]

Think this has just done my career, the straw that broke the camel's back as they say

January came round on the 1st PSG & City bid for arguably my best two players, Bordas was my star BPD Spanish International, Sibabi-Djobo came through the youth system & was a club icon, Germany's main man, club captain, team leader the lot

They'd been scouting them for a year & had their players talk them up to the press so when the bids came both wanted to talk, I was screwed basically, I had no choice but to negotiate

When they were both sold, Erling Haaland came to me & complained that were both sold (again, I had zero choice) & I had to promise I would strengthen the squad, fair enough, I needed to. All of my key players agreed with him 

So I spent all of January searching & scouting, trying my hardest to find anyone that could even come close to filling their boots, they were impossible to replace. I tried my hardest to sign an England international from Arsenal, but even £160 million wouldn't tempt them. In the end I signed Johnny Castro from Atletico, a 4* Argentina international winger, Johnny Luis from Barca, a 4* inside forward & my old mate Alex, a 4* Brazil international centre back. I paid way over the odds for the two I brought but I was pretty desperate

Pretty good job I thought, 3 very good signings until the window closes & Mr Haaland gets back to me.

 

He's refusing to even speak to me for breaking the promise!! Now bear in mind, he's my number 9, team leader, vice captain & I'm done here       

Edited September 11, 2019 by Johnny Ace

[Lanko]

Sometimes this is on the manager not having the balls for a confrontation but sometimes it's also poorly done. Recently had three players who felt they achieved everything for the club. They didn't want to renew and both me and the captains failed to convince them.

So in the end they signed pre-contracts with other teams and I even managed to receive a decent fee to liberate them right away, so I could free up wages and give playing time to youngsters/underused players. Here comes the leaders demanding to know why I let them go... Hello? Didn't you see they were publicly UNHAPPY for weeks, their contracts had 6 months left and they ALREADY signed for another club and that both me and YOU failed to convince them to stay and instead of letting them go for free I managed to get some cash to reinforce us?

In the end I sorted it out, you just have to be really harsh to bypass the idiocy of some of these events. Just told them to act professionaly and go back to their jobs. They apologized, got a boost to morale and I never heard of it again.

Players that believe promises were broken (when they are extremely vague in some of the requisites) are just told something like "I can't believe you brought this up again. Get the hell out of here!" and they run away with their tails between their legs. Same thing for the constant moaning about new contracts.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Lanko

[Johnny Ace]

Player power at it's best (worst!!) isn't it @Lanko??

[decapitated]

Theres a similar issue with Celtic. Boyata is going to leave for a free in summer 2019. You can however sell him for £7m-ish in summer 2018. The problem is Scott Brown reacts the same way Haaland does and there is literally no CB you can get for the budget even with the money you have and whatever happens Brown suddenly gets the hump and refuses to speak to me. It's happened on two save games where I tried that approach. I guess the answer is not to sell Boyata at all and take the loss of any potential sale value when he leaves on a free in summer 2019. I do agree though, player interaction in future versions of the game needs some fine tuning to avoid situations like these. 

[herne79]

I agree nobody likes to have upset players, I'd just like to ask something:

3 hours ago, Johnny Ace said:

I had no choice but to negotiate

Why do you believe you had no choice?  By the looks of things you didn't need the money to keep the club afloat nor were they running their contracts down.  So why not say no not selling?  It's a choice - it might be unpopular with the players but that tends to wear off after a little while.  And also if you knew these players were highly sought after, why not offer them new contracts before the transfer window to help ward off suitors?  Or had they just signed new contracts?

And also:

3 hours ago, Johnny Ace said:

Erling Haaland came to me & complained that were both sold (again, I had zero choice) & I had to promise I would strengthen the squad

Again, why no choice?  Why do you feel you had to make a promise?  Were there no other options to choose from?  If there were, why discount them and resort to promising to strengthen the squad before you know who's available to bring in?

You talk of player power, but don't sell yourself short.  There is plenty of manager power too .

[Johnny Ace]

1 hour ago, herne79 said:

I agree nobody likes to have upset players, I'd just like to ask something:

Why do you believe you had no choice?  By the looks of things you didn't need the money to keep the club afloat nor were they running their contracts down.  So why not say no not selling?  It's a choice - it might be unpopular with the players but that tends to wear off after a little while.  And also if you knew these players were highly sought after, why not offer them new contracts before the transfer window to help ward off suitors?  Or had they just signed new contracts?

And also:

Again, why no choice?  Why do you feel you had to make a promise?  Were there no other options to choose from?  If there were, why discount them and resort to promising to strengthen the squad before you know who's available to bring in?

You talk of player power, but don't sell yourself short.  There is plenty of manager power too .

Sibabi-Djobo had signed a new contract the previous January, I offered him a new one & a bumper pay raise when City were sniffing around then, he still had a good three & half years left on it from memory. I really don't get why he was so sold on City, we'd knocked them out of the CL at least twice over the last 10 years & they were 3rd in the league at that point. Looking back, I should've flat out turned them down & taken the flack from him, instead I've got my main striker giving me grief & it's spread throughout the squad.  Surely turning down the offer would've had a bad effect with him being team captain?

Bordas, I can't remember to be honest, I think I may have offered him a new contract over the summer & he wasn't interested & this was the first bid from PSG for him 

When Haaland & I had the talk, at that point I was fully intent on adding quality to the squad & I thought I'd done that, I brought in 3 4* players after losing a 4 & 5* player

I'm going to stand my ground on this stuff in the future, I'm the flipping boss 

 

[FrazT]

As has been said above, there are many times when you need to be strong and not give in to the players, especially when they are complaining  about how you handled another player's issues.  Tell them forcibly that you are the boss and you make the decisions for the good of the team and most times they will back down.  I would also advocate not making any promises to a player if you have any doubt that it cant be delivered.  I remove all contact promises and signing promises and have never had an issue if the money is right.

[Haiku]

Yep, best advice is to AVOID promises at any cost! Even if that means your players will become unhappy. Usually unhappy players settle down after a good few months. You played your cards badly here.

[sporadicsmiles]

17 hours ago, Johnny Ace said:

I was screwed basically, I had no choice but to negotiate

Always keep your best players on long (3+ year) contracts and you will never have to sell them. If they are on a long contract you can risk making them unhappy. In most cases they will be alright when the window ends (and you can even make them okay directly at times when they confront you about rejecting bids). Do not be scared of unhappy players, they are not the end of the world. And with good squad management they are not really relevant (you can usually appease squad anger by saying you are shocked they want to let a player go and weaken the side).

17 hours ago, Johnny Ace said:

I had to promise I would strengthen the squad, fair enough, I needed to.

I dislike this promise because the game is entirely vague on how you can fulfill this promise. It is not entirely obvious what the criteria for having strengthened the squad are. I would like this to be a lot less opaque. Again, this is a situation where I would have told the players either to trust me (I am sure that is an option) or that I would give young players a chance (which I do all the time anyway so it is easy to keep this promise). You are unlucky, perhaps this is one of those cases where using the ingame editor would be okay with you, if you feel it is more bugged than not?

[Johnny Ace]

3rd of May & Haaland is now happy. I've still been playing him & he's playing well, we're doing well & everyone's happy