LLM finances

[Strangequark]

Hullo, I'm managing Bath at the moment and just starting the 4th season. Stuck in the Vanarama division (mid table). My team seems to be losing tonnes of money and is constantly projected to be hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt even though I'm well within my wage budget. The stadium capacity is 8K but I sell only 250 season tickets. 

 

So the dilemma is I have no money to invest in youth setup or coaches or players but somehow I have to make a crap tonne of money. The only solution seems to be doing well in the league and getting promotion but if I spend my full wage budget god knows how much in debt the club is going to be. I've offloaded most youth players and have a small squad of less than 20 players. 

Anyone have any advice on how to get out of the trench?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Edit: I'm currently 2K below my wage budget so I feel like if I spend any less I'm just not going to be able to even finish mid table. Also a sidenote it is really freaking hard to get good loan players I find. I filter by attributes and nobody accepts but then if I filter by what my assistant thinks I can get all the players are trashy and would only really be backups.

 

[BuryBlade]

The FA cup should be a priority. The prize money will help and if you can get to the first round, with a bit of luck, if your game is picked for TV coverage, it's about £70k at that stage. 

Sign non contract and loan players. This reduces your wage bill and generally, the loan players will be better than what you can buy anyway. I appreciate you've said that the ones that are coming up aren't good enough. Keep checking g every few weeks as the loan market changes quickly. 

At the end of the season, when you get an email that says youth players released, go through them all. One by one, scout any that look good. Any that have potential to be playing 2 or more leagues above you, try and sign them to 2 year deals. They play well for a season and you sell them, and include 25% sell on clauses. The money received by doing this each season will more than cover any losses. 

Im currently playing as Weston Super Mare and I've got to league 1 from the VNS and by doing the above, I now have £8.5 million in the bank. 

I hope that helps somewhat. 

[Strangequark]

52 minutes ago, BuryBlade said:

The FA cup should be a priority. The prize money will help and if you can get to the first round, with a bit of luck, if your game is picked for TV coverage, it's about £70k at that stage. 

Sign non contract and loan players. This reduces your wage bill and generally, the loan players will be better than what you can buy anyway. I appreciate you've said that the ones that are coming up aren't good enough. Keep checking g every few weeks as the loan market changes quickly. 

At the end of the season, when you get an email that says youth players released, go through them all. One by one, scout any that look good. Any that have potential to be playing 2 or more leagues above you, try and sign them to 2 year deals. They play well for a season and you sell them, and include 25% sell on clauses. The money received by doing this each season will more than cover any losses. 

Im currently playing as Weston Super Mare and I've got to league 1 from the VNS and by doing the above, I now have £8.5 million in the bank. 

I hope that helps somewhat. 

 

Yes it does a bit I haven't been doing well in the FA cup at all. Think I went out first game every year but one. Slightly depressed about the youth situation because I haven't had a single good youth prospect in 3 years of playing. The "top" youth players I have lack intelligence to play at a higher level etc. Low determination. Pretty miserable. They aren't even good enough to be subs unless I'm desperately injured.

[BuryBlade]

Just to clarify on the youth situation, I don't mean your own youth intake, I mean the youth players released by every other club in England at the end of each season. They are the ones to go after, particularly clubs geographically close to yours. ?

[Johnny Ace]

You're within your wage budget but look at the wage costs compared to your turnover, looks like the board are quite happy running up some debt

[Strangequark]

1 hour ago, BuryBlade said:

Just to clarify on the youth situation, I don't mean your own youth intake, I mean the youth players released by every other club in England at the end of each season. They are the ones to go after, particularly clubs geographically close to yours. ?

Ah yeah sorry I didn't understand. Yeah I try and do that but mostly they just reject me haha I think I was aiming too high with the ones I was picking or something. 

[Strangequark]

1 hour ago, Johnny Ace said:

You're within your wage budget but look at the wage costs compared to your turnover, looks like the board are quite happy running up some debt

 

Yes I know, they are complete psychopaths! The trouble is my wages are really low compared to other teams in the league so I just can't compete. My highest earner is on around 500 a week and other teams have 1.5k a week players. I need bigger attendance in matches or I need to try and get a good fa cup run like BuryBlade suggested.

[Guest]

Every division has its haves & have nots, it's no different to managing Hull in the Premier League & having to watch Man Utd being able to pay a player 10x what you can. 

[Strangequark]

18 minutes ago, Barside said:

Every division has its haves & have nots, it's no different to managing Hull in the Premier League & having to watch Man Utd being able to pay a player 10x what you can. 

Yeah but I read all these people doing back to back to back promotions like it's nothing. Clearly I'm doing something wrong! 

 

I'm just stuck losing money year on year until inevitably there is some horrible crash

[Guest]

For all you know they could have been resorting to all manner of cheats & exploits, getting into the football league with a smaller clubs is much tougher in FM16 than it used to be but when it clicks & you get a good few seasons it makes it the more enjoyable.

[chestermike]

I have to agree with Barside, its much tougher on 16 than previously. Took me 15 years to get Chester into the Prem in this version, got stuck in the championship in particular. And now in my go with Sancataldese in Italy, 9 seasons in and I am only in serie c/c. With Sancataldese I am kind of stuck in the same problem as you are, although I have grown the club and built the squad up and have lost in the playoffs 3 of the last 4 years. In Italy cup runs are virtually impossible, in fact ive only been allowed to enter the cup in the last 3 years. So what I do is I give myself a personal wage limit for a player (£250PW on this save in this league) and I wont break it, lost out on some class players but the club surviving is more important. I bring in loads of loanees for £0PW, and I also keep my squad small, 23 maximum but often 18-20. There are so many players that can do a job at this low level that I usually sell anyone and just replace them with a free transfer, sold some quality players too but it supports the club and the wage budget I do spend, selling one player can quite often pay the wages for a year. Keep scouting released lists, scout players whose contract is expiring in 6 months, get a good plan of who you can bring in. It takes time to build, but you get there.

[Strangequark]

49 minutes ago, Barside said:

For all you know they could have been resorting to all manner of cheats & exploits, getting into the football league with a smaller clubs is much tougher in FM16 than it used to be but when it clicks & you get a good few seasons it makes it the more enjoyable.

Yeah it is good that it is a challenge but also it does feel like there is no escape from terrible doom at the moment  damned if I do damned if I don't sort of thing, I'll keep plodding! It is fun even still! 

[Cannes]

Often the board allows you to run a high deficit, simply because they are willing to inject cash when it becomes critical.

[Guest]

32 minutes ago, chestermike said:

There are so many players that can do a job at this low level that I usually sell anyone and just replace them with a free transfer, sold some quality players too but it supports the club and the wage budget I do spend, selling one player can quite often pay the wages for a year. Keep scouting released lists, scout players whose contract is expiring in 6 months, get a good plan of who you can bring in. It takes time to build, but you get there.

Not getting attached to players & being willing to sell as soon as a club starts offering money that equates to a few months income is crucial, cash is so much harder to find that players when managing in the lower leagues.

[chestermike]

2 hours ago, Barside said:

Not getting attached to players & being willing to sell as soon as a club starts offering money that equates to a few months income is crucial, cash is so much harder to find that players when managing in the lower leagues.

So true

[Strangequark]

9 hours ago, Barside said:

Not getting attached to players & being willing to sell as soon as a club starts offering money that equates to a few months income is crucial, cash is so much harder to find that players when managing in the lower leagues.

Yeah this is good advice, though I haven't had any offers. My strategy has been to just buy the best stats I can afford but only 1/2 year deals. Nobody seems to really progress at my club via training since it is part time and pretty bad facillities. So every summer a load leave on a free and then I have to pay sign on fees to get in more players (OK they are slightly better I hope but still this isn't good for the bank). Sad thing is i'm doing worse in the league this year despite having better players.

[Crispypaul]

Not mentioned here yet I think but if you can get a lot of parent clubs then the annual fees can mount up.  Also you can sometimes get friendlies with them to help in pre-season (plus of course cheap loan players, often much better quality then your own).  Depends on your board though (Accrington's board just rejected my request despite being skint).

I've also done this managing in Iceland before, which is similar to LLM as most teams even in the top tier are semi-pro.  Had something like 4 clubs as parents, even if the players they offered weren't good enough I was getting £200k p.a. roughly in affiliate fees.  

 

[Dorchester]

I play FM14, so don't know if this works in FM16:

Each season the scout tries to scout all players in England. You can save so much money each season by cancelling this. Scouting costs are huge for a little team, set it to only find players that are at least 3/4 stars ability, or 5 stars potential, and realistic transfers who are available for loan. And only when u need to.

[agiannop]

Make also sure , that when you sign a player on contract  do not offer him a signing fee or additional bonus for caps/goal etc. You can save a load from this.

But as it has mentioned before , the board quite sure will handle the debt , by either providing cash injection or taking loan. You should only make sure to be under the wage budget that they have made available to you.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Crispypaul said:

Not mentioned here yet I think but if you can get a lot of parent clubs then the annual fees can mount up.  Also you can sometimes get friendlies with them to help in pre-season (plus of course cheap loan players, often much better quality then your own).  Depends on your board though (Accrington's board just rejected my request despite being skint).

That's a little cheaty (that should be a word) for my  liking but it's good advice for folk who are not after hyper realism.

[Strangequark]

I did get a parent club so I could theoretically get decent loans but it isn't doing a whole lot apart from the random cash injection each year. I'm definitely after realism not finding stupid hacks. I did see a youtube video where you set up a tournement in the summer or something and invite loads of big teams and you get tonnes of television money but that to me sounds ridiculous.

 

Gone with the idea of just sticking to wage budget and got in 4 released youth players that aren't really good enough to play for my first team but have good potential. My only worry is not sure if they will develop since I have low infrastructure so i'll loan then probably.

[Crispypaul]

4 hours ago, Strangequark said:

I did get a parent club so I could theoretically get decent loans but it isn't doing a whole lot apart from the random cash injection each year. I'm definitely after realism not finding stupid hacks. I did see a youtube video where you set up a tournement in the summer or something and invite loads of big teams and you get tonnes of television money but that to me sounds ridiculous.

I don't think that works any more in FM 16.  Used to work in the earlier iterations.