FM 2015 - I'm not promising what I am promising

[Sejanus]

Hi all,

I have a question on making promises to players - it applies to the Football Manager 2015 and so possibly may not be relevant to the current version.

I'm on a long term save, and have taken Woking from the Conference into the Championship.  Now, my captain came to me several months ago, halfway through my current season, noted that one of the other teams (Birmingham I think it was) was looking at him, and said that if an offer was made he wanted us to accept it because he was after the opportunity to play for a bigger club.  I asked him for one more season and he accepted.  So you can imagine my surprise when I checked the promises made tab and found that I'd apparently promised him the club's standings would improve.  I double-checked the conversation tree and I'd definitely only asked him for one more season. 

So we have just completed the season, finishing mid-table, and lo and behold I get the message that as our club standing has not improved (although, as it is still May, rankings have yet to be released) I have broken my promise and the captain wants me to sell him as soon as possible.  I look at my promises and I find that he is pleased I have promised to sell him and I have 94 days to do so.  Fuming, I reluctantly transfer list him (I haven't been able to find any adequate replacements in his D (R) position despite a long search).   Next thing I know is I get a message says 'x is on the transfer list at Woking but has expressed his desire to stay at Kingsfield.' although under happiness he is 'looking forward to leaving the club.' 

This is the second time I have been caught by the promises.  When we were in League 1 I got a promise from my star striker to play for one more season and if we didn't get promotion then I'd sell him, only to find that he wouldn't sign the contract extension to actually take him through to the end of the following season so I had to sell him early anyway. 

Does anyone have any ideas what is happening?

[Guest]

I think sometimes what you say in the media about it they can count as a promise, and its a bit cryptic. I had a player that wanted to leave, so I transfer listed him, the media asked me about it and I said it would be resolved soon, thinking that would mean he is going soon, but somehow this translated into me promising to play him in the first team.

[Sejanus]

Thanks for the thought, but while my media comments may have contributed to his 'he both wants to stay and wants to leave' confusion, they wouldn't have had any effect on my asking him to stay an extra season and finding that I'd somehow promised him our standing in would football would increase.  That was only ever a conversations between the pair of us.

[Sunstrikuuu]

One of the recurring problems with the promise system is that there are more responses than buckets.  It's possible that you're running into that, where there are multiple options that feed into a single promise, even if they shouldn't.  Another example of the same behavior is the "will accept a bid that meets our valuation", "will accept a bid from club X" and "will accept a bid after we sign a replacement" options, all of which lead to a "will accept any bid" promise with no mention of valuation, replacements or particular teams.