[FM21] - Introducing the new Albion Football Club. (An Athletic Club / Chivas style model with an All English Twist!)

[Wisła]

 

Foreword:

It has long been my desire to implement an Athletic Club of Bilbao / Chivas style Club within the English Football system, with the same hardcoded transfer restrictions that Athletic have in the game, but to only be able to sign English players. For many years, I have been thwarted in my attempts to recreate this in England.

Until now.

Initially, I had high hopes that the new Club Vision options would enable me to create what I wanted, and to an extent, they have. I had a nicely working "requirement" set up by the Board of the new Club, to sign English players, and that would have been good enough for me considering it is a massive step froward from nothing at all.

But then the project suddenly took to new heights, upon the discovery of another forum member's great efforts in this regard.

With huge thanks to @themodelcitizen and his work on this thread I recently came across:

 

 

-- the Mighty Bermuda Hogges have come to my rescue, and my plans can finally be realised.

 

Following the guidelines layed out by themodelcitizen (and others) in the above linked topic, I have used the editor to perform a touch of necromancy on the formerly deceased Bermuda Hogges (with their hardcoded restrictions to only sign players of their own Nationality), completely edited every aspect of the Club to make it my own, and placed them within the English Football pyramid. It has been thoroughly tested, and I am delighted to say has encountered no playthrough issues, and is working exactly as planned.

If you're the sort who enjoys a little scene setting role play, then please read on for a thorough intoduction to the storyline behind our new English Only Club. Or if you'd prefer to get straight to key details and start playing right away, there's a TLDR section at the end of this post.

Enjoy.

==============

Preface:

Following our lame defeat against Iceland at the 2016 European Championships and disappointing Semi Final exit to Croatia at the 2018 World cup, an emergency meeting was called summoning the main decision makers from all departments at the F.A, The Premier League and Football League, with the aim of identifying the key failings and potential areas for improvement necessary to reestablish the English National Team as a major force at International tournament level.

No stone was left unturned in the quest for a tangible pathway forward to vastly improve the fortunes of our national side. Further meetings ensued, consulting the Chairmen, Directors of Football and Club Managers across the entire spectrum of our professional game, seeking to pool our resources into finding and establishing a "magic formula" to truly put English football back on the map as a global leader.

Rumours grew over whispers of a radical restructuring of the entire football pyramid, but whilst many were in agreement, insiders suggested they simply could not garner the required majority to implement such sweeping changes as those proposed. Undeterred though, and determined that some form of drastic action was needed, the top brass at the F.A. continued working away behind the scenes thrashing out a plan to improve our International performance, that would not require the approval of every club in the country's professional divisions.

 

Introducing The Albion Football Club.

 

Come the end of the 2018-19 season, and the F.A.'s announcement they were in advanced talks with some major players in the world of finance involving a significant investment into the English game, the football world was abuzz with speculation as to what exactly this might entail. We didn't have to wait long, as before the start of the 19/20 season, the Football League posted notice that the coming season would see one more relegation place from League Two than usual, to make space for the inclusion of a brand new Club, presumably with some level of F.A. involvement. The precise nature of which we have been left guessing, and the closer we've drawn to the start of the new 20/21 season, the more frenzied that speculation has become. Until now.

With every fan's eager anticipation of the new fixture lists due out next week, all major media outlets were put on notice of "one of the most important Press Conferences in English Football History!" announcing a hugely exciting new venture to be supported by the F.A., The Football League, and as yet unnamed "significant investors of substantial individual and collective wealth".

This extraordinary conference went on for over an hour, but here's a highlights package:

 

Press Conference, F.A. HQ, Burton-Upon-Trent.

 

Louisa Fyans, (F.A. Director of Communications): Welcome to F.A HQ. Thank you all for coming, as we set out to enlighten the country on the steps we are in the process of rolling out to enhance our performance and reputation at International level, following what can only be described as decades of dismal failure to live up to the great expectations we all have for our English National Team.

Seated alongside me at the top table, you will immediately recognise some of the high profile faces to my left. These fine men are here to represent the Committee established to oversee what we firmly believe will become one of the most significant events and investments into improving our national game, in English Football history.

From right to left, please welcome, John McDermott (F.A. Technical Director), his predecessor (and now lead Technical Consultant for this exciting new project) Les Reed, Sir Jim Ratcliffe (Chairman and CEO of Ineos, plus owner of Team Ineos Cycling and OCG Nice Football Club), Sir Richard Branson (entrepreneur and Founder of the Virgin Group of companies), along with England legends Steve Coppell and Mark Wright.

I shall now hand over to John to get the ball rolling and tell you why we're here, and then we'll open the floor to your questions.

John McDermott (JD): Thank you Louisa, welcome all, to what will surely be one of the most exciting Press Conferences in modern history. I am delighted to be here, and talk you through our unprecedented new English footballing adventure.

After more than a year of high level discussions regarding the future of English Football, considering every possible angle in the search for vast improvements on our level of development and ultimately International performances, we finally settled upon what we felt were the fundemental issues affecting the english game.

These being a key lack of opportunities and playing time at the highest Club levels of football for our brightest potential English stars, and insufficient levels of team cohesion, familiarity and understanding, brought about by the massively congested fixture lists in modern football, preventing any decent amount of time for the National Managers to work with their squads.

With the ever increasing pressure and drive for success amongst our top Clubs, both at home in domestic competition and on the European Stage -- not to mention the drastic effects of high finance on the game -- we have seen a superinfluction of the world's top talents arriving upon our shores to ply their trades in what is widely considered to be the best and most competitive league in the world, our very own F.A. Premier League.

As such, whilst that is great for fans of the top clubs and the entertainment value of our Premier League product -- it necessarily limits the available top level game time and therefore ongoing development for our most promising English players.

Clearly something had to change, and we have spent the last 14 months or so crunching the numbers and analysing every aspect of where and how the most significant changes were possible to favourably effect our footballing fortunes.

From a legal and anti-competitive perspective, simply limiting the number of foreign nationals was never going to garner the levels of support necessary to implement, so we had to look toward more creative ways of increasing the opportunities for developing our own English players, without compromising the integrity of our competitions or adversely affecting the financial considerations of our member clubs across the whole professional footballing pyramid in our country.

To that end, to guide you through these developments, I will hand over to my collegue Les Reed, who has been instrumental in pulling together all the necessary plans, strategies and key personel to give us the best chance of enjoying a most exciting and hopefully successful new venture.

 

Les Reed (LR): Thanks John. Good afternoon to you all. It is my great pleasure to unveil our ambitious plans for the future development of our National game, with the announcement of a new and soon to be rising power in English Football. I am delighted to introduce you, to the new Albion Football Club.

Having long been an admirer of the highly successful model that Athletic Club of Bilbao have been using, of only signing Basque players and developing them through their Cantera Academy system at Lezama, I have been consulting with them extensively through the last calendar year, to see how we might be able to implement our own verion of that over here. Albion Football Club is the fruition of that ambitious desire.

An English Football Club, using only English players, in the English football leagues. It is hard to imagine how revolutionary this concept is in the modern global game. Starting our inaugural campaign in League Two for the coming season, our aim is to build a squad from the best English players available at each level we compete at over the years, with the ultimate ambition of becoming a competitive Premier League Club, whilst fielding the entire (or at least vast majority) of the England National Team in our side, playing together week in week out in the same style as the England set up, and developing a tightly knit group who know each other inside out, and can then take those high levels of integration understanding and cohesion into International duty together.

Our whole group here at this table are hugely proud of what we have been able to come together to achieve in getting this exciting enterprise off the ground, and look forward to expecting even more satisfaction as we start to see our hard work and strategic plans being implemented and rewarded with footballing success out there on the pitch.

Make no mistake, this is a long-term project for us, and whilst we will not be expecting immediate fireworks as we'll need time and understanding to lay the groundwork and firm foundations upon which our future triumphs will be built, ultimately we have instilled a Five Year Plan, to work towards growing our new All English Club organically, with the intention of being a Premier League side by the end of that period of time.

Naturally, this is going to take a lot of hard work, and massive resources to pull this off. Which is why we are so delighted to have secured the backing of some of the highest net worth individuals in the country to help us in our project, with two of our most significant and dedicated financial partners in this venture seated immediately to my left, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Richard Branson. Without not only their wealth and generosity, but also their drive, vast expertise and network of connections, none of this would have been possible.

I first met Jim whilst speaking at a Leaders in Sport Conference last year, in which I had briefly outlined some of our ambitious proposals. I was blown away when he came up and introduced himself after the event, and then asked simply -- "so, how can I help?".

Just like that, after a couple of really promising initial discussions, our seemingly far off dreams immediately began to take on the tangible feeling of emerging reality. From that point, it was exciting times ahead for all concerned.

Still, rather than this being an extended monolgue from myself, I shall just quickly introduce the two England Legends to my left, Steve Coppell as our new Head of Youth Development, and Mark Wright who will be taking on the role of Director of Football, and now it's over to you, to focus on the inevitable range of questions you will have about our new Club, and its operational structure. The floor is now yours.

The Times:  Thank you Les - just how difficult was it for you to implement your plans for this new Club? I'd imagine there may well have been some significant resistence from other clubs, particularly thinking of those likely to be fighting against that extra Relegation place out of the Football League to make way for the new Club?

LR: Of course, there was some level of resistence at first, as there often is when new revolutionary forces are at work in any industry, looking to shake things up and usher in significant changes to 'the way things are'.

But once we were able to hold some high level meetings with all the current stakeholders in our English game, it soon became very aparrent to all concerned, particularly in the current financial difficulties of these Covid-19 times, that far from being detrimental to their chances of survival, the existence of Albion Football Club was actually going to be a very positive development for everyone.

Once it was clear that our financial backers were fronting up a sizable solidarity financial package to be shared equally among the Football League Clubs to help them to stay afloat, people suddenly became far more amenable to our existence.

The Times: You bribed them?

LR: Haha, of course, some might see it this way, but from our perspective, it was simply a sizable and very generous investment into the English game, amidst financially uncertain times. Our presence, and the financial clout that accompanies it, is going to prove to be a very stabilising injection into the footballing and wider economy, just when it is needed the most.

 

The Independent: How was the name of the new Club chosen?

LR: That was really pretty straighforward. We wanted a name that immediately reflected a sense of "Englishness" about it, but without actually having the name England itself, as the F.A. (whilst being a major partner in this venture) cannot be seen to have any direct implication of involvement or preference toward one club over another.
Albion was the original name given to England when the Romans first arrived at the White Cliiffs of Dover, meaning "the white lands". As a name already associated with Club football in this country, it seemed a clear and obvious winner.

 

SkySports News: Where will you be playing your games, and what part of the country will you call Home?

LR: This was something we took great deliberation over. With the name Albion derriving from Dover, we considered setting up our base around there at first, particularly as it would have made for a great catchment area, without any sizable clubs in the region. The F.A. had also been clear that an arrangement could be possible to use the England facilities at St. Georges park in Burton upon Trent, and that was also appealing as a central location within the heart of the Country.

But in the end, we felt for many reasons, that we wanted to be in the nation's Capital, but whilst we will indeed call London our Home, we are very much a National Club, rather than a London one. Albion is for everyone, and going forward, we very much hope to become everyone's second favourite Team, whilst working on building up a brand new fanbase amongst our younger generations, for who Albion will become number one. We have already purchased with our own money 5000 new Season Tickets which we are in the process of giving away, to many deserving local projects, schools, youth centres and the like, to get the ball rolling. Once the new Club catches on, we also expect a sizable walk-up crowd to start swelling our numbers.

SSN: So are we likely to be watching Albion at Wembley at any point to come?

LR: We sure hope to make many appearances there as a result of our future successes over the years, but no, whilst this was also a mooted possibilty in the early stages of discussions, there is little point in a newly growing club playing in front of a mostly empty stadium of that magnitude.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe: And also, once Richard and I were on board, and had sounded out some of our contacts to become involved in our adventurous project, we very much wanted to build something brand new, from the ground up. Something that is ours. Lord Anthony Bamford, the third significant investor and member of our Board of Directors, was able to use his vast expertise and contacts to secure a site very close to the new Wembley that could become our very own. And that is where we'll be growing our new venture.

The London Standard: So is this in anyway connected with the secretive development that has been going up under wraps behind heavy security walls dubbed "The Albion Village"?

Sir Jim Ratcliffe: Indeed it is! This site, as well as being host to a new entertainment complex and Student Accommodation, will also feature an English Football Museum, alongside our new pride and joy, the St. George's Stadium, the development of which is already well underway!

When the season kicks off, we'll already be able to accommodate 20,000 spectators, more than enough for our humble League Two beginings, whilst we are growing our fanbase. But thanks to modern construction techniques, we'll essentially be able to keep building the stadium up around us, as the Club progresses up the football pyramid. Eventually, it will hold just shy of 80,000, which should be completed in around six years or so, once we are hopefully well on our way to becoming an established Premier League Club.

 

The Financial Times: With such an illustrious high net worth Board, what kind of investment levels can we expect to see into this new venture?

Sir Richard Branson: Naturally starting as low down as we are, any initial investment has been into the infrastructure of the Club. We're building State of the Art Facilities across the board, from our new Three Lions Training Centre and Football Academy, to the Stadium itself, our setup will be the envy of England.

But clearly as far as squad building goes, we will be constrained by the same lower leagues financial safeguards as all the other Clubs at our level, So whilst between Jim, Anthony and myself, finances are never going to be an issue for this Club, we'll have to invest wisely at first on the playing side. My own input will be in the form of some significant sponsorship deals through the vehicle of my Virgin Group of companies, in sponsoring the Away and Third shirts, whilst Sir Jim's INEOS Corporation will provide further significant investment with sponsorship of the Home shirt. Our new partnership with what we believe to be the outstanding kit manufacturer of our times in Hummel, is one that promises to be very exciting, as well as lucrative. They have some great bespoke ideas for us. We'll flash the new designs for you at the end of this Conference.

 

BBC Sport: What can you tell us about your current state of readiness for the season ahead? Building a brand new club of this stature from the ground up cannot have been an easy task?

LR: Certainly not, it has been one of the biggest challenges I've worked with as a project in my footballing life to date. We have the makings of a very significant structure in place. We'll definitely be ready to kick of the season ahead with a bang!

We want everything about this Club to be steeped in all things England. To that end, we have secured the services of a great many England Legends and Icons to join us in our Backroom and Coaching Staff. We are a highly ambitious Club and we want to bring in the very best English staff and players to help us progress. The new Manager will have an exceptional range of tools at his disposal to get the best out of the squad he will build.

 

BBC Radio London: Speaking of managers, have you already identified and secured your preferred candidate for the position?

LR: We have narrowed down a very good short list of high quality names that we wish to speak to about the role, whether that is simply to seek their advice going forward, or with consideration to make an appointment from this pool of talent, will depend upon how our initial discussions develop. But whilst we already have a good idea of the kind of direction we want to take going forward, naturally this far reaching media drive to promote our new Albion Football Club will be likely to unearth some further candidates for us to consider speaking with about their own ideas on taking us forward. We still have some time yet before we need to make our final decisions, and of course there will likely be a few potential Football Manager playing experts who may show some interest for us to think about.

 

BBC Sport:  If any potential future Albion Managers are watching or reading this now, do you have any particular message you'd like to relay to them?

LR: We are a highly ambitious Club, with all the necessary financial backing in place to become a major force in the years to come. Many of the best young English players in the country are going to be keen to get on board with our project to help advance their own careers, so as a manager, as long as you're comfortable with the pressures that come with high expectations, you'd have to be mad not to be interested in helping us take our new Albion Football Club forward.

Whilst we are particularly keen to speak to potential new staff with some level of previous international involvement with the England Team, and that will certainly be a major advantage; primarily we are looking for Managers who are passionate to help us develop not only the Club, but the English game, and as such any candidates will be happy to work within our existing structure of bringing in and developing young English players.

Upon your arrival, between Steve and Mark in the Football Development side of things, there will likely already be a small youth squad assembled from some great potential prospects whose contracts are running down at other clubs, but other than that, within the budget constraints of a League Two Club, you will essentially have a blank slate to work from, and will enjoy the exciting responsibility of building up your squad entirely from stratch, as well as attracting quality players for the future to develop in our Under 23s.

You have a couple of weeks left to get your CVs into us, before we begin to finalise our plans for the season ahead.

 

==============

Afterword and TLDR:

This project does exactly what it says on the tin. Establishes a brand new Club entering at League Two Level in England, which can only sign English players. No work arounds necessary, or simply choosing to adhere to an All England policy. You simply cannot sign any non-English players, even if you wanted to. But then if you did, this is probably not the project for you.

The ultimate aim is to sign the best English players possible at each level, working your way up through the Divisions, and to establish Albion as a quality top flight Club, fielding as many of the England National Team as possible, playing Club football together week in week out.

 

Hints and tips:

• When you first load your new game, you will have an entire squad to build and gel together. This will most likely take well into your pre-season schedule to assemble a whole new squad at such short notice. Therefore it is highly advised to load up the Swedish Allsvenskan division on view only setting, and choose to start your game in early May. Trust me, you'll be very glad of the extra time to build your squad.

 

• When you first start looking for players, although you'll find that many good young Englishmen will list playing for Albion as part of their career plans, they'll not be too interested in joining your revolution until you already have some at least decent signings on board. They want to see how things are shaping up before taking the plunge. Be careful not to offer too many important roles to your early signings, as once you start getting a good side together, you'll quickly find even better players are now willing to sign for you.

 

• Bear in mind that whilst you have immense financial backing behind you, at League Two Level,  you still have an enforced salary cap and spending safeguards established by the Football League to adhere to. So be sure to keep an eye on the wages you're dishing out. That expenditure can total up quite quickly.

 

• You'll initially at least,  have more money than you can spend at this level. So use it wisely.

 

Directions:

Download and unpack the Rar file, "albion.rar"

Place the Albion FC V1.1.5.fmf file into your editor files folder, here:  Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2021\editor data

Place the two folders (Kits and Logos) into the appropriate places in your Graphics Folder in the following location: \Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2021\graphics\

Before starting your new game -- be sure to clear the cache in the Preferences section.

In some instances, when your game first loads, if you're unlucky, you may find that the name of the club changes back to Bermuda Hogges! At first I was mortified, but found that entering a record for the new Club in the Real Names Fix file from FM Scout (FM21 Club Names by FMScout.lnc) to be placed here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Football Manager 2021\data\database\db\2140\lnc\all

then clearing the cache again, and reloading the game will make this issue disappear.

Any questions, please ask on this thread and I'm sure we can get you going.

Thanks, and enjoy.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

EDIT: Unfortunately the most recent editor fmf file was not included in the original Rar. The most recent version Albion FC V1.1.6 has now been added below.

the only changes are related to the 3D Stadium. Version 1.1.5 has the traditional old 4 sided stadium, which was not what I wanted. Version 1.1.6 has a stadium that will have corners when the full construction is finished.

If you have already started a save with version 1.1.5 and would prefer the stadium with corners, please let me know and upload your save game file for me in this topic, and I can edit the stadium for you, in your current save, and return it to you with corners. Apologies for the oversight.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

albion.rar

Albion FC V1.1.6.fmf

Edited May 24, 2021 by Wisła
Added Version 1.1.6 with full 3D stadium corners

[Rob 396]

You beauty

Now if only there was a way you could create a whole league system consisting of clubs who can only sign players of certain nationalities .. imagine seeing Champions League finals where all players were of the clubs nationalities ....

[Rob 396]

- IGNORE, RESOLVED -

Edited May 18, 2021 by Rob 396

[Wolf_pd]

On 18/05/2021 at 21:46, Rob 396 said:

You beauty

Now if only there was a way you could create a whole league system consisting of clubs who can only sign players of certain nationalities .. imagine seeing Champions League finals where all players were of the clubs nationalities ....

There is a workaround, it's just a boatload of work.

Too bad the duplicate function does not copy over all the hardcoded stuff for teams.

[Rob 396]

14 hours ago, Wolf_pd said:

Too bad the duplicate function does not copy over all the hardcoded stuff for teams.

Now that is true

It's such a shame that it's a hardcoded feature, and not something you can just enable in the Editor - I wish SI would sort that out for us

[Rob 396]

Just a screenie of how they generally seem to get on, AI manager -

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by Rob 396

[Wisła]

On 18/05/2021 at 20:46, Rob 396 said:

You beauty

Now if only there was a way you could create a whole league system consisting of clubs who can only sign players of certain nationalities .. imagine seeing Champions League finals where all players were of the clubs nationalities ....

 

As Wolf says, it can be done. I'm away til  Friday night and can't currently access the editor so can't be specific, but in Advanced Rules, somewhere under the Squad Rules sections, you can set each individual club in whichever competitions you need, to only be able to register players of whatever nationality you wish.

Sure, that doesn't stop a Club signing players of other nationalities,  but there's clearly little point if you can't play them. 

 

3 hours ago, Rob 396 said:

Just a screenie of how they generally seem to get on, AI manager -

 

Thanks for that. I can see how the Club could struggle at first. In testing, when first going to sign players up, it was a difficult task. It is hard to attract anyone of any quality to an empty squad, and I'd imagine even more so for an AI manager.

What I found (and why I suggested to be careful giving your early signings important roles) is that as there are no current players, everyone expects that they'll be a star player in your otherwise empty squad. So you have to find the right balance in actually attracting players to start filling those spaces, and bearing in mind that once you do have some reasonable players in, you'll find a lot more better players suddenly want to join.

You can then get in some very good potential youngsters, who only expect to be fringe or squad players, who are actually a fair bit better quality than your first round of signings who expected to be first choice. Which leads to obvious potential issues going forward.

To combat this, I'd suggest making your first batch of signings (you won't have a lot to choose from anyway) those who you will consider your second eleven on short term contracts, and save the more important roles for your second batch of signings who'll actually be your first eleven, giving these longer term deals.

The first season is always going to be a tough task, with the board expecting a Club of our stature (high reputation for the division due to the nature of the project) to breeze the Title, but building a whole new squad from scratch takes some major time to gel and build up proper familiarity and cohesion.

All part of the challenge!  

 

As an aside, I have an uncomfortable feeling that the file V1.1.5 I shared MAY be one version behind the final one, but I can't check til I'home tomorrow. If that is true, the only changes were edits I performed on the 3D Stadium, nothing game play related. See, when I got to my first test game, I was most disappointed to see no corners, so I went back to the editor to add them in, and ensure the right look with rennovation sections in place. If the stadium doesn't bother you, then just carry on. But if anyone who's downloaded so far would prefer the proper stadium design, then might be an idea to wait til I can check you have the most recent version. Sorry about that, just a feeling I had that the latest should've been 1.1.6. But could be wrong.

As you're testing too Rob, perhaps you could just pop into a live game for me and confirm how the St.George's Stadium looks to you? Don't worry if you don't get time, but would appreciate it if you do  as I'll be wondering now til I get home.

Cheers. 

[Wolf_pd]

4 hours ago, Wisła said:

 

As Wolf says, it can be done. I'm away til  Friday night and can't currently access the editor so can't be specific, but in Advanced Rules, somewhere under the Squad Rules sections, you can set each individual club in whichever competitions you need, to only be able to register players of whatever nationality you wish.

Sure, that doesn't stop a Club signing players of other nationalities,  but there's clearly little point if you can't play them. 

Well, if you set the transfer preferences in such a way that English (example) teams can buy players from other nations, the only thing you need to do is move all foreign players away from your English teams.

I am working on an FM20 mod including among others the rules for Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and East Germany who did not allow foreign players in their competitions and did not allow their nations players leave for foreign lands either.

[Rob 396]

Think I've found a loophole in the buying system - you can't BUY non-English players, but you can offer contracts to non-English players who are free - and it let's you sign them, too

[Wolf_pd]

8 hours ago, Rob 396 said:

Think I've found a loophole in the buying system - you can't BUY non-English players, but you can offer contracts to non-English players who are free - and it let's you sign them, too

A human player can, an AI player won't.

[Wisła]

Unfortunately I was correct. For some reason the V1.1.6 file was in a different place than usual, which is why I missed it when packing up the rar.

I have added version 1.1.6 to the original post. The only difference between the two versions is that 1.1.5 has the old traditional 4 sided stadium without any corners. That is not what I wanted. Version 1.1.6 has a stadium that is currently in the process of being built up around you, and when the stadium expansion project is completed, will have all four corners in use. Apologies for the oversight.

If you downloaded the original V1.1.5 file and have already started your save, but would prefer to have the (in my opinion much better looking) Stadium with corners, please just let me know, upload your saved game file here, and I can edit your stadium, in your current save, to put the corners in for you if you would like.

 

On 20/05/2021 at 20:16, Wolf_pd said:

Well, if you set the transfer preferences in such a way that English (example) teams can buy players from other nations, the only thing you need to do is move all foreign players away from your English teams.

I am working on an FM20 mod including among others the rules for Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and East Germany who did not allow foreign players in their competitions and did not allow their nations players leave for foreign lands either.

That sounds good.  

Does that actually work properly now then? I last tried working with transfer preferences in FM17, but clubs seemed to mostly ignore them and still signed players I didn't want them to.

 

On 22/05/2021 at 11:48, Rob 396 said:

Think I've found a loophole in the buying system - you can't BUY non-English players, but you can offer contracts to non-English players who are free - and it let's you sign them, too

Are you talking about a loophole in my hardcoded transfer restrictions Rob, or within the system Wolf is discussing?

Edited May 24, 2021 by Wisła

[Wolf_pd]

8 hours ago, Wisła said:

That sounds good.  

Does that actually work properly now then? I last tried working with transfer preferences in FM17, but clubs seemed to mostly ignore them and still signed players I didn't want them to.

Works well for the countries mentioned. There is one thing though to add to that, you have set squad and match day squad rules as well, so teams don't feel the urge to buy foreigners. Because of newgen rules on occasion a foreign player will turn up, but it gets pushed away to the reserve leagues.

[melogroovy]

This

looks 

awesome

 

Thanks