Tips on buying players more easily no matter if you are in charge of elite, mid or low tier club in Football Manager.
Today I'm going to show you how to be extremely successful in the transfer market. It doesn't matter who you are managing or what your goals are, there are some baseline strategies you can implement that will make you way better in the transfer market.OK, so I'm going to give you a summary of the three main transfer strategies.
If you are a big team like Paris Saint-Germain or Barcelona, you don't have to worry about money so much, but you have to worry about winning everything. This gets you prize money, reputation and more sponsors. So winning everything is more important than your transfer strategy at the big club.
If you're a mid-tier club and don't have a lot of money, then you need to create short-term solutions, you need to have impact signings, you need to get over that hump, so you get more money coming in and build for the future. If you can't do this, then you will get stuck in limbo.
And finally, if you're a small team and don't have a lot of money, your best bet is to plan for the future, so you'll need to sell a whole bunch of youngsters that will make you a whole bunch of cash. This means that you'll need to focus on signing young players that look like hot prospects or wonderkids because they will make you a lot of money in the future.
Let's talk about the actual transfer process.
No matter who you're signing, no matter how old they are, no matter what position they play, your goal should always be to minimise the cost as much as possible. Once you find the player you want to purchase, check his value. Now, his value is composed of some different factors; these factors are influenced by age, other club interest, recent form, how much time is left on the contract. Players who are nearing the end of their career or end of their contract will have a lower value.
ALSO READ: Football Manager Guide On How To Save Money On Contract Negotiations
You should use the value as an essential foundation for your transfers. As a general rule of thumb, excellent players will cost a lot more, and bad players will cost a lot less. Now this is a general rule, it is not always in effect, you'll have to pay attention is the player transfer listed, is the player injured severely, is the player unhappy and so on and so forth.
Sometimes, the club selling the player will need the money badly, and you'll be able to get good players or promising players for lower than you thought you could. So this is why it's important to always start with a low bid.
Just make sure you're not going unrealistically low, for example, if you are bidding on Marco Verratti in his prime, you won't offer 5 million because the other team will get offended and they'll stop responding to you. This makes negotiations take longer and is just a pain in the ass.
Okay, now let's move on to transfer clauses because they are crucial in keeping your club financially healthy. If you don't use transfer clause, you'll go bankrupt.
The most useful transfer clause is the monthly fee option because it lets you buy players for a lower base price in return for paying more but over a longer period. Expensive players will be virtually unpurchasable without this clause, and if you are managing your club carefully and correctly the long term payment is not going to harm you by the end of the season.
So when you are making a transfer bid, always be sure to low-ball the base fee because you'll be most likely adding on monthly instalments. When buying expensive players the more months you pay, the more you'll have to pay. So for example if you are trying to sign Verratti and you put 48 months, they are not going to take 5 million out of your 48 months, that's a bad deal for PSG. You might get better prices with smaller teams because they might need the cash badly, but the more months you set aside from monthly fees, the more you'll have to pay.
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| It is reported that Barcelona are trying to sign Marco Verratti from PSG. This is how you and they should bid for a World-class player. Make a 48 monthly instalments bid so your budget deduction gets spread over the years. |
The other transfer clauses that are worth engaging with are the appearance fees and the profit percentage. If you are struggling to make a deal, but you're getting pretty close you just need something to put you over the edge; you can try these fees to help out.
By the way, another thing you can do is play around with the minimum goals fee. If the player you are buying is going to be sitting on the bench mostly or playing in defence or you know you are going to sell him quickly, you can try adding this clause for an extra bit of value for the selling team. Just think hard about how you are going to use this player because you don't want to screw yourself over and end up paying way more than you anticipated.
The basic strategy behind every single bid is to bid low and offer long term clauses so that your immediate finances do not take a hit.
Also, don't forget that you can play around with your vacant transfer budgets and you can allocate money to how you need it.
Be sure to also make use of your scout reports because they will tell you generally how much you can expect to pay for the player. Now, these aren't always 100% accurate, but they do give a good base point.
Now that you know how to make the most of all of your bids you can implement these in anyone of three strategies I've mentioned before.
If you are a super elite team, you can get world-class players by paying 48 months of fees, and this will help you in the long term because if you are winning everything with these world-class players, you will always have a positive cash flow.
If you are a mid-tier team, these clauses will help you get to the next level. For example, if you are signing a player near the end of his career, you can put in a whole bunch of clauses that won't come to fruition, because this player will retire or you will get rid of him very quickly.
And finally, if you're a small team, these clauses will help you sign the best youngsters in the game for a bargain price and then you'll profit of them massively in the long run. It doesn't matter if you give away 10-20% of your profit if you sell somebody who is going to sell for 30-40 million you are going to make a great deal.
