Unable to re-sign a player

[Parker]

Not sure if this is a bug or just a weird feature, but I'm in an interesting spot with one of my (now former) players.  I am managing Shamrock United and had a good goalkeeper come through as a regen.  He's been the starter for my team for the last three years, but with a year to go on his contract, he started to get unhappy and talked about wanting to play for a bigger club.  I kept checking every month and he refused to sign a new deal, so I ended up losing him on a free. 

The weird thing is that no bigger club has ever been interested in him, and at this point, even though it's 4 months after he became a free agent, there are literally no clubs interested in him.  However, he won't sign with me because he says it's been too soon since he left the club.  Again, I think this is just a quirk in the system, but has been a very weird situation overall.

[Prepper_Jack]

Yeah, the "wants to move to a bigger club" issue can be a little odd. Had a guy who was good, but nobody was really interested in him for transfer. We had a "very close" relationship, and he "held me in the highest regard" as a coach. I get a notice there's this issue with him, and so I decide to talk to him about it. He appears with his agent, and both have rather hostile body language. He immediately starts threatening me that he's going to go to the press unless he's sold to a bigger club, and make my life a nightmare, or something on that order. That's not an appropriate way to start a conversation, so he spent the next 2 years in the under 19s, getting told on a weekly basis how much of a discredit to the club he was. In a separate case, someone approached more civilly, and I just said something like "That's fine, but I'm not going to do the leg work on this. If an offer comes in with an acceptable value comes in, we'll take it.", then negotiated the offer, and they left happy. After receiving no offers, he dropped his issue, and was happy to remain at the club.

It's a case of ambition exceeding ability, which is a common occurrence in the real world.

[Parker]

Yeah, I'm not necessarily upset that the guy wants to move to a bigger club, although it's a strange thing to have for a player when there was literally no interest from any other club.  Not exactly like Liverpool was interested in him and I was shooting down transfer offers.  The bigger thing for me is that once his contract runs out, he still has no interest from any other team, he's just sitting there as a free agent and refuses to negotiate with me.  I did absolutely nothing to antagonize him and started him until the very end.  I would assume in the real world, if you're unemployed for 5 months, and a club offers you the chance to sign a contract, you'd sign and insist on something like a minimum release clause.  I know the system isn't perfect, it's just an odd situation.

[Dan_987]

Has he been mentored by a Highly Ambitious player by any chance?

I had that with one of my youth players. Was focusing on improving Determination and Cohesion, but seemed his ambition increased as well. Leading to him to refusing to sign a new contract and wanting to move to a bigger club.