Rookie Advice Needed

[steve.battisti]

Hi all,

American here trying to tackle FM for the first time. I'm decently familiar with football from the tactical side, not so much from the management side. I've decided I want to start from the bottom up. I started unemployed, with all fictional players, and ended up with a team in the French National league (SC Bastia) who fired their coach 8 games into the season. We're in 18th place out of 18 teams.

Unsurprisingly, my squad looks like it could use some upgrades. (In particular, my best goalie is a 2-star 39-yo.) But I'm not very familiar with transfers and so on yet, and my current situation seems limited: 

- My transfer budget is 0.

- My payroll/wage budget is maxed.

- My second team has five players.

- My U19 team has six players.00

So, I figured I'd try to see what kind of free transfers I could find, but even that is tricky, as none of them have been scouted and I just have the one Head Scout, and I have no payroll/wage budget anyway.

So . . . do I have any options for obtaining players mid-season? Or do I need to wait out the end of this season when some contracts end/new budget becomes available?

Specific ideas for a newbie would be very much appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[greenz81]

If you have no wages, the best you can do is find players on loan that clubs are willing to not taking any money from you for wages.... other than that, wait til the new transfer budgets are set

[steve.battisti]

4 minutes ago, greenz81 said:

If you have no wages, the best you can do is find players on loan that clubs are willing to not taking any money from you for wages.... other than that, wait til the new transfer budgets are set

Soooo... Did I mention I'm new at this? How can I find players on loan that clubs are willing to send me without any money for wages?

[greenz81]

go to the search function and look for the preferences option. there you can pick what players are set for loan. Delve into the search preferences, look through everything

[greenz81]

and its better to play with real players if you know nothing about football. after a while player names will stick in your head for future games and you start to create a world in your head of what players are good.

[Ruskin]

Try asking your board for a Senior Affiliate and then have a scout from your team conduct a Team Report on your Senior Affiliate to identify potential players they will loan to you.  The benefit of this is that Senior Affiliates will usually loan you players for free, while other teams may try to assign you some portion of the player's salary and/or a monthly fee.

[steve.battisti]

1 hour ago, Ruskin said:

Try asking your board for a Senior Affiliate and then have a scout from your team conduct a Team Report on your Senior Affiliate to identify potential players they will loan to you.  The benefit of this is that Senior Affiliates will usually loan you players for free, while other teams may try to assign you some portion of the player's salary and/or a monthly fee.

Thanks! Will give this a try!