Premier League and FFP rules: Please help

[Lucozade1]

Hi guys, just looking for a bit of guidance if possible.

Just started my third season with Southampton (Finished 5th the season before) and after selling quite a few players I have ended up with an initial budget of 210m with wages available up to 500k. Obviously great...., but then.

Half way through July, I edited my budget so that it was all the way full on the transfer side, as I was curious what my max would be. A few days later, I had an offer accepted for a player but could only offer him £170 a week, so I thought, I better adjust my budget back to normal, but I was not allowed. Apparently, due to Premier League FPP wage restrictions, I was spending over my allowed limited (72m). It is now down to 68m, but it seems to move up and down on a daily basis without anybody coming in o

Since the start of July this season, I've worked out that my wage total had probably gone up by about 100k a week. What I don't understand is, why I had 500k extra to spend on wages (Or why the board would have set an initial budget of alowing me to increase my wages by 500k), but without really signing anybody, all of a sudden I was breaking FFP rules.

Have I messed up by increasing transfer my budget, Or was that just a coincidence in timing?

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Norfolk Enchants]

You can't increase your wage budget by more than £12,000,000 per season unless it is supplemented by a growth in revenue.

[Lucozade1]

Thanks for the reply. I do understand that, and as an oversite, Its something I need to keep an eye on for the next season, but I guess you may know the answer to this.

Will my wage budget go up by 12m every year? or do I need to be close to hitting my budget for it to increase the year after.

As for my friend, he is Liverpool, and his budget for the year is 140m, and is spending around 112m, will his wage restrictions increase, stay the same, or lower as the gap is large.

The thing that confused me is, if I was so close to hitting my wage budget, why at the start of this season, did my board give me a budget of 210m and 500k (26m per year) in wages to spend, considering I am only allowed an increase of 12m

[puffascruffowitz]

No, you modifying your budget like that should have no bearing on FFP rules. I think it's probably where you can't adjust your budget when you're in negotiations.

[nomorezen]

The FFP summary seems borked to me, it doesn't feel right, now i understand that bonus payments can mess things up a fair bit so the fact my team were on the limit both above and below for most of the season was fair enough for instance in January i was selling and loaning out players because my team were projected to be a few million in wages over budget over the period. At this point i was thinking actually its not so bad and the FFP summary was doing a good job because it was fairly static but suddenly in April/May the projection went from saying £64m to £50m at the moment its projected at £53.84m and i am allowed a max of £61.66M. It would help if the projections included bonus payments so you could see what may happen if all your players hit bonus targets or indeed miss them. Now i am caught in a bind because i want to max my wage budget so that i can have another £12m on top next season, but how can i trust the FFP page given its sudden £10m in wage budget ranges its been giving me.

I find it unsatisfactory that the FFP and wage budgets are not on the same page in some way to help the player manage the situation better.

[Lucozade1]

No, you modifying your budget like that should have no bearing on FFP rules. I think it's probably where you can't adjust your budget when you're in negotiations.

The thing is, before I modified my budget, I had 500k in spare wages, along with 200m + in budget. It seems such a flawed rule within the FFP guidelines. If my projected profit is over 200m for the year, I should be able to spend more on wages. It's really set my team back by a lot of years because I've weakened my team and cannot bring anybody else in

What I also don't get is, since finding this out, I kept a close eye on this on a daily basis on the game, and without buying or selling anybody, within 1 week of game progression I went from 73m, (72.17m allowed) to 68m

[Norfolk Enchants]

No, you modifying your budget like that should have no bearing on FFP rules. I think it's probably where you can't adjust your budget when you're in negotiations.

Modifying the budget won't affect FFP whatsoever, but the board might not let you kick the wages back up if it does happen to be over the regulations.

I had this while managing West Ham, I dropped my wage budget a little bit to stretch a transfer bid out a little bit, only to not be able to adjust it back. The information the board gave me (above the slider) was that a wage increase would go against the FFP regulations in place. Pretty sure I was over as I got fined a percentage of the amount I was over by.

edit: I wasn't able to offer players new contracts for the rest of the season.

[Norfolk Enchants]

Thanks for the reply. I do understand that, and as an oversite, Its something I need to keep an eye on for the next season, but I guess you may know the answer to this.

Will my wage budget go up by 12m every year? or do I need to be close to hitting my budget for it to increase the year after.

As for my friend, he is Liverpool, and his budget for the year is 140m, and is spending around 112m, will his wage restrictions increase, stay the same, or lower as the gap is large.

The thing that confused me is, if I was so close to hitting my wage budget, why at the start of this season, did my board give me a budget of 210m and 500k (26m per year) in wages to spend, considering I am only allowed an increase of 12m

As I said before, it can increase by more than £12,000,000 if the revenue supports it. I made it into the Champions League which made my wage budget spike about £550,000 per week. I assume the budgets that the board give you take the years budget into account and give you what they think can be covered from the seasons performances.

I don't know what would happen between the difference of £140,000,000 and £112,000,000 though. Perhaps his finances allow him to extend a little further? I think this is just to prevent the smaller teams from spending more than they can afford.

[Lucozade1]

Modifying the budget won't affect FFP whatsoever

So, it seems you have had experience with this, so my questions are:

If I'm spending between 70-72m in wages by the end of the season, I assume it will get upped to 84m at the start of the next season (considering right now it is at 72m)

If lets say, I got my wage down to around 62m for the season, at the end of the season, would it stay at 72m, or would it still get upped to 84m?

This just seems like a vicious circle with now progression. As a lot of my players have % wage rises at the end of the season, I could go into every season with such a limited wage budget

[Norfolk Enchants]

So, it seems you have had experience with this, so my questions are:

If I'm spending between 70-72m in wages by the end of the season, I assume it will get upped to 84m at the start of the next season (considering right now it is at 72m)

If lets say, I got my wage down to around 62m for the season, at the end of the season, would it stay at 72m, or would it still get upped to 84m?

This just seems like a vicious circle with now progression. As a lot of my players have % wage rises at the end of the season, I could go into every season with such a limited wage budget

Forget about the £12,000,000 for a bit, that's just the minimum it can go up. You can increase your wage budget by any amount higher than that if your income supports it.

I've personally never had my wage budget go down so I can't really say, but I'll assume the board would work out what you can spend next season. Remember the £12,000,000 isn't a hard cap, it's just an amount you can't surpass if your club cannot afford it.

But I do know that I went £200,000 per week over budget in my second season and was fined for doing so.

[Lucozade1]

Forget about the £12,000,000 for a bit, that's just the minimum it can go up. You can increase your wage budget by any amount higher than that if your income supports it.

I've personally never had my wage budget go down so I can't really say, but I'll assume the board would work out what you can spend next season. Remember the £12,000,000 isn't a hard cap, it's just an amount you can't surpass if your club cannot afford it.

But I do know that I went £200,000 per week over budget in my second season and was fined for doing so.

What is regarded as income?

My protected profit is 217m, my current profit is 255m, surely that is classed as income and should increase my wage budget?

This season alone, I've sold about 95m in players and only spent 35m. In January I sold 2 players for 82m, and didn't even bring anybody in!

Thanks for your replies by the way

[Norfolk Enchants]

That's where I have to bow out, I have absolutely no idea how it's calculated.

[Lucozade1]

That's where I have to bow out, I have absolutely no idea how it's calculated.

Well thank you for all your input

[nomorezen]

Here we go here is an example of the problem, remember i was hovering above/below the budget most of the season!

Now when i saw that i was inside the FFP all of a sudden in early May i very nearly renewed contracts and got loan players back (i decided not to in the end). Suddenly just a few weeks later with no signings, contract renewals or loan players back i am just above budget again. This is just a fail really, how can the projection be so far wrong at the end of the period? the game should know what we have paid players over 90% of the season so should be able to have a better projection by this point. Even then the game needs to tell us the player what will happen should win bonuses trigger in any projection. It makes it very hard to trust the information given it is so important.

[johnhughthom]

I was fined £3.4m for my wage bill going up by more than 10%, despite being well under the wage budget before and after the rise. The news screen made no mention of a £12m limit to increases, just the 10%.

[Cougar2010]

Here we go here is an example of the problem, remember i was hovering above/below the budget most of the season!

Now when i saw that i was inside the FFP all of a sudden in early May i very nearly renewed contracts and got loan players back (i decided not to in the end). Suddenly just a few weeks later with no signings, contract renewals or loan players back i am just above budget again. This is just a fail really, how can the projection be so far wrong at the end of the period? the game should know what we have paid players over 90% of the season so should be able to have a better projection by this point. Even then the game needs to tell us the player what will happen should win bonuses trigger in any projection. It makes it very hard to trust the information given it is so important.

Speaking from a financial background projections are very much only as good as the information put into them.

In terms of your example it would be very difficult for FM to produce very accurate projections due to the number of different bonuses on offer.

Based on your pics my educated guess would be season bonuses have pushed your wage expenditure over the threshold. The coding for the projection I suspect is simply current cost/number of months so far in season * 12 months. Things like finishing position, seasonal landmark bonuses etc would all throw the projection off and require additional coding which may or may not be possible in FM due to memory restrictions.

[nomorezen]

Speaking from a financial background projections are very much only as good as the information put into them.

In terms of your example it would be very difficult for FM to produce very accurate projections due to the number of different bonuses on offer.

Based on your pics my educated guess would be season bonuses have pushed your wage expenditure over the threshold. The coding for the projection I suspect is simply current cost/number of months so far in season * 12 months. Things like finishing position, seasonal landmark bonuses etc would all throw the projection off and require additional coding which may or may not be possible in FM due to memory restrictions.

You are correct yes in fact there are £6.32m of bonuses paid on the 19th and 25th of may combined. My gripe is that the projections before May were telling me i was failing by as much as £3m and then took a dive by £13million from the highest projections at some point in late april/may. In reality there should be a best/worst case scenario projection based on bonuses being paid out or not so that the player can manage their finances. The FFP page as it stands just varies so much its not to be relied on.