Help improve my transfer activity

[Marabak]

Hi guys

I don't think I am getting the best out of my transfer activity, rarely returning a decent amount for selling players and having to overpay for new players.

For instance, I am Southampton, just starting 3rd season having not done too good the previous two. Calleri (who I signed right at the beginning) has come to me wanting continental football, so I said I would accept an bid if it was an acceptable amount. He is currently valued at £12.25m, has 3 years left on his contract, has Southampton has a favoured club. A couple of German teams are continuously making the same bids of around £10-11m, which obviously isn't an acceptable amount for my top scorer for the last two seasons. No amount of negotiating or rejecting, or even competition between themselves, has raised or even changed the bids they make. Fortunately, at the moment, Calleri is not kicking up a fuss, but it's only a matter of time. I've set his "transfer value" to £60m, obviously I am not intending to get that, but hoping it would be a point of negotiation. How can I get them to up their bids?

I just had to sell Jordy Clasie for only £2m more than his value (technically, his value in upfront cash and an appearance add-on so might not even get that), despite having a dozen teams after him, after he also wanted to leave for continental football. Unlike Calleri, he also kicked up a fuss, so I was happy to let him go, but the first offers I received were miles below his "value", and I struggled to negotiate it upwards despite the massive amount of interest in him. Every time a team withdrew when I negotiated up to something like £15m (he was "worth" £10.25m), they would withdraw and he would kick off again.

Conversely, I have just put an offer in for a Dutch RB called Ter Avast. Despite being valued at £3.4m, Twente negotiated hard to get my to bid £8.5m up front with some addons making it up to around £12.5 in total. Three other teams then came in, all with lower offers, one as low as £5m+ (I can't see the addons for this one, but I know West Ham had an offer of £6m with £7.5 with addons).

The AI seems to be able to use interest in a player to bump up the prices, how can I do the same? How can I get clubs to improve their offers for players, rather than continously submitting the same offer, time and time again?

[Guest]

What do you do when a bid comes in? Break it down step by step & for an extra chance of help make your save available for others to try & get a good deal done.

[Welshace]

Basically.. you are reading too much into the players value.

The AI will try and negotiate you down to as low as you will go, obviously it's working as you settled for those prices, particularly if the other team knows you have a player who wants to leave.

And conversely, the AI will keep trying to negotiate your bids for players higher to obviously get a better deal, the trick is not giving in until you get a good deal, this might take weeks or seasons.. if they don't want to sell, they just won't.

[Marabak]

Hi Barside

I've managed to get to the end of the transfer window without losing Calleri (or Clasie, or suddenly decided against signing elsewhere and has stayed instead). When it gets to January and it all kicks off again, I'll upload my save when an offer is put in.

Welshace, the problem I have is that the AI doesn't seem to negotiate. They just withdraw after I try and up the price, and then come back a day or two later with the same bid.

[Adzke]

I'm receiving a lot of non-negotiable offers at or just below the game's valuation (and far below my own and set valuation) of my players.

[Guest]

Let's see if you can give you some tips on how to approach negotiations, hopefully you'll get some offers in the next window that we can work with.

[Yankee112DK]

Do you "negotiate" or "suggest"? That makes a huge difference in my experience. The AI never responds well to "negotiate" but you can often get a real negotiation going with "suggest".

[Adzke]

In an attempt to be proactive, I'm asking for help in transfer negotiations.

I bought Hakim Ziyech from Juventus 18 months ago. I paid £15,75M.

This season he has been an important part of my first team. He's played in all but three league games, and he has featured in all of my games in the Champions League.

He hasn't expressed any concerns regarding wanting to leave, even though the big(ger) clubs are sniffing around. The game values him at £24M, I have set an asking price of £54M, as he has 42 months left on his contract.

Last season I won the Premier League for the first time, and I beat Sporting Lissabon in the Champions League final, obviously also a first.

Several big clubs are interested in him. I would like to start a bidding war for his services. That seems like the realistic thing for a club like Newcastle to do.

Manchester United has come in with a bid just at the game's valuation of the player, and far below my set asking price. What do I do from here?

I'm not really interested in the usual "Well, you shouldn't want to sell him in the first place" replies. I have chosen to enter negotiations, but I want a decent price. What do I do?

[Guest]

First thing to do is ask a good scout to report on Utd so that you can assess their current squad & the likely importance they are placing on your player, will he be first team regular or a rotation backup to a starting XI stalwart.

Once you have a judgement on where the player well be in the Utd hierarchy you can start negotiating a fee that is appropriate for what they expect of the player, might be worth looking at what they paid for recent signings to given you an extra idea of what they are willing to spend & even what they might have left to spend.

In terms of the first counter offer you could double the up front fee & the amount paid on installments, just increase the number of months to 18 or , I'd also add in a goals scored clause that matches the Int' Appearance clause. This could see your first counter being almost £40m rising to almost £50m, is that enough if they agree? Only you will know that answer & if they counter you can just reduce values until they make a final offer that you then accept or reject.

[Adzke]

First thing to do is ask a good scout to report on Utd so that you can assess their current squad & the likely importance they are placing on your player, will he be first team regular or a rotation backup to a starting XI stalwart.

Once you have a judgement on where the player well be in the Utd hierarchy you can start negotiating a fee that is appropriate for what they expect of the player, might be worth looking at what they paid for recent signings to given you an extra idea of what they are willing to spend & even what they might have left to spend.

In terms of the first counter offer you could double the up front fee & the amount paid on installments, just increase the number of months to 18 or , I'd also add in a goals scored clause that matches the Int' Appearance clause. This could see your first counter being almost £40m rising to almost £50m, is that enough if they agree? Only you will know that answer & if they counter you can just reduce values until they make a final offer that you then accept or reject.

Hi, Barside. I'll give it a go with the scout report. I tasked a scout of mine with it (JPA: 16; JPP: 17; TAC KNW: 16; full knowledge of England). He came back with a report showing that Ziyech is indeed not better than their starting AMC, but he is better than their starting AMR - a position in which he is also natural. Of their entire first team squad, all but five players (two of which are transfer listed, two are youth players, one is Januzaj) make quite a lot more money than Ziyech does. Therefore, I assume that it would be fair to say that he is both looking at a bigger paycheck and plenty of playing time.

I have a set asking price of £54M, but I will gladly accept an offer at or above £45M, and I'll propably accept anything above £40M.

For my negotiationg, I kept the upfront fee at £15M, as I thought that seemed about right, and I added 12 months to the instalments along with an increase to £15M. That brings the total to £37,5M. That flat out declined to negotiate, and they walked away.

Why would they do that? The offer seems entirely unrealistic to me. I'm the only team ahead of them in the league, and they expect to get a player with years on his contract on the cheap? Why? One of their rival clubs are even interested (though a minor interest), and instead of driving the price up, as I would assume would happen in real life, it seemingly drives it down instead.

Also, how do I attempt to start a bidding war between Man City and PSG?

EDIT: I'm not really that dissatisfied with not selling him, transfers fall through in real life as well. But I simply don't understand the game's mechanics behind the negotiation proces.

[Guest]

They could be lacking funds in their transfer budget & the fact they walked away from a very reasonable increase in the amount to be paid by installments suggest that money might be tight. Again I'm guessing here but how does your rep compare to their rep? It could be that they are looking at your players because you've been successful, wouldn't be the first time that a club forcing their way into the the elite group is picked apart by the traditional heavyweights & the AI will look to do that if a player has a high level of interest in joining them.

PSG & Man City might prove to be more amiable to doing a deal should they make an approach.

[Adzke]

Unless it's January 2016 it's unlikely but they could be lacking funds in their transfer budget & the fact they walked away from a very reasonable increase in the amount to be paid by installments suggest that money might be tight.

PSG & Man City might prove to be more amiable to doing a deal should they make an approach.

Should I try adding a manager to Man Utd to get a glimpse of their finances?

[Guest]

Should I try adding a manager to Man Utd to get a glimpse of their finances?

I wouldn't, some things are best left unknown plus a new manager could reset the budgets.

[Adzke]

I wouldn't, some things are best left unknown.

But how will I know if that was what caused the bid to fall apart? It still makes no sense to me.

They are the world's third most valuable club, they are listed as rich, they have the game world's second largest turnover, can I somehow assess their debt?

[Guest]

It's still only a guess, for you we know they could be looking at him as a low level rotation player due to poor scouting & are only willing to spend £25m on a squad player.

SI will be able to see the AI target code if you do take a peak at their budget & think they're low-balling you or if the agent & player are causing a problem with the likely fees they want, another option is to create an alternate save where you sell the player to them & see what sort of deal they agree to assess whether they should have been willing to pay more.

[Adzke]

PSG are now bidding even lower on him...

Having just sold two players for a combined £130M I guess I will have to take this in stride, though

[Geordieboy52]

I currently have a player worth £27.5 million, first team regular and is now attracting attention from 'bigger' teams. Teams are bidding no more than £12 million for him (he is not listed and has a high squad status, and does not want to leave) and refuse to even negotiate. It is a bit of a pain but not game breaking.