FM21 What age do you start thinking to sell?

[crpcarrot]

i have only one save and have reached the championship. have noticed i [in lower leagues at least] 30+ players decline quite fast so generally have sold them when they reach 29/30. hasn't happened often as been generally buying really young players. now some of the players who got me up the leagues are reaching 30. they are not first choice but are useful to the squad but are all team leaders. everyone respects them. sold one of them who hardly plays and fans not really happy. so just got me thinking in the recent versions of the game players maybe good even after reaching 30?

and generally wheat age do you start thinking of selling your players?

[DarJ]

Between 27 and 29. They’re not going to improve much and their value is probably the highest by that age 

Edited May 10, 2022 by DarJ

[du Garbandier]

20 minutes ago, DarJ said:

Between 27 and 29

at that age, I'll certainly be sympathetic to any offers that come in, but I generally let senior players run out their contract, and occasionally renew them. I tell the fans I love 'em, but in reality I don't care what they think.

Edited May 10, 2022 by du Garbandier

[crpcarrot]

i cant afford to keep them. with my wage budget i am still loaning players to gap the quality. board is not intereted in promotion jsut want to be a midtable championship team. but still we have the 2 lowest wage budget in the league.

[DarJ]

1 hour ago, du Garbandier said:

I generally let senior players run out their contract, and occasionally renew them.

If they have good natural fitness then I’ll probably let their contract run out with the club 

[FrazT]

Once they reach 29, I will start considering offers and by 31, I will negotiate any that come in.  I will also let long serving players run their contracts down at 32/33.

[Draakon]

I know that it wasn't exactly what you asked, but player value is the highest around 24. That's also the age when player's development slows and you have a player who is pretty much at his best and, in every next contract extension he'll start to ask way more money (until he turns 30-32).

For me it's also the time to decide whether he should move on or remain in the club and that decision is made (if he's a first team player) based on his character and leadership attributes. The players who stick around should be leaders on and off the pitch, good mentoring material with excellent determination - model citizen, professional, driven or perfectionist personality.

If I have these players, I try to keep them in the team until the end of their career, way above 30 yo, and try to give them enough game time to keep their status in hierarchy even if physical attributes start to decline.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Draakon

[Nacaw]

Player values take a nice jump when you reach the championship, so that's a good time to sell. Other than that, it totally depends on their natural fitness. Lower league players generally decline faster because of lower natural fitness, but anyone with 15+ can play to 33 without problems/very little decline. 20 natural fitness makes players straight up freaks. Ciro Immobile at 36½ still has 15/15 pace/acc and has barely declined at all. It used to be that selling at 29 was the thing to do, but that has really changed in FM22.

[Draakon]

21 minutes ago, Nacaw said:

Player values take a nice jump when you reach the championship, so that's a good time to sell. Other than that, it totally depends on their natural fitness. Lower league players generally decline faster because of lower natural fitness, but anyone with 15+ can play to 33 without problems/very little decline. 20 natural fitness makes players straight up freaks. Ciro Immobile at 36½ still has 15/15 pace/acc and has barely declined at all. It used to be that selling at 29 was the thing to do, but that has really changed in FM22.

I think it goes nicely with what's going on in real life football. For long it's believed that after 30 years footballers' "best before" is over, but past few years have proved otherwise. Cristiano Ronaldo is a glaring example, but he alone can be labeled 'special case' because of the way he takes care of his body and how professional he is with it, but even without Ronaldo we see more and more players who are over 35 years of age and still play in the highest level - Zlatan, Thiago Silva, Joaquin, James Milner etc. come to mind. Those are outfield players, but there's plenty of goalkeepers who are 35-40 years old and still first team players. 

I think that SI might want to take a look how age affects player attributes in the game and tweak it a little in the future versions, because how it's handled so far is a little simplistic - attributes, especially physical attributes start to decline and fairly rapidly (too rapidly to my liking).

My ideas:

• natural fitness should be closely tied to professionalism, because recovery and taking care of yourself (your body) outside of training is essential, especially as players get older - how properly you warm up, your recovery, sleep, menu, partying etc. Basically - your natural fitness can't be too good over 30 when your attitude and discipline isn't professional enough.
• age should impact physical abilities, but less. Yes, agility, pace and acceleration should decrease a little, but not too rapidly and there's no logical reason why strength and/or stamina should be significantly affected by turning 30-35.
• age should impact injury proneness, and fatigue. Match fatigue should mount quicker (not sure, perhaps it already does it). We often see in real life that older players can play games in the highest level and their skills aren't affected by age, but their recovery is. They can't go 40-50 games in a season in the starting line-up or play 4-5 weeks twice a week. You need to rotate them more, give more time to recover OR injuries will occur and when (serious) injuries occur, it will take them more time to recover than 20 years old players.

 

Basically what I'm saying is that natural fitness shouldn't determine the speed of attribute decline (you can leave it to age+professionalism to decide), but only match fatigue and injury-proneness and then it's up to the manager - how well he can exploit his experienced players without overexerting them.

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Draakon

[gunner86]

19 minutes ago, Nacaw said:

Player values take a nice jump when you reach the championship, so that's a good time to sell. Other than that, it totally depends on their natural fitness. Lower league players generally decline faster because of lower natural fitness, but anyone with 15+ can play to 33 without problems/very little decline. 20 natural fitness makes players straight up freaks. Ciro Immobile at 36½ still has 15/15 pace/acc and has barely declined at all. It used to be that selling at 29 was the thing to do, but that has really changed in FM22.

I’m kinda in this camp to be honest. Age is not a factor for me (although the board don’t like when I sign players over 30 - unless it’s Messi apparently).

I will quite happily keep players well into their mid 30s as long as either their physicals haven’t tanked, I can play them in a role that is less demanding, or the improved technicals and mental attributes can make up for the drop off in physicals.

[crpcarrot]

1 hour ago, Nacaw said:

Player values take a nice jump when you reach the championship, so that's a good time to sell. Other than that, it totally depends on their natural fitness. Lower league players generally decline faster because of lower natural fitness, but anyone with 15+ can play to 33 without problems/very little decline. 20 natural fitness makes players straight up freaks. Ciro Immobile at 36½ still has 15/15 pace/acc and has barely declined at all. It used to be that selling at 29 was the thing to do, but that has really changed in FM22.

good info i didn't link natural fitness with the age factor. 

[rsihn]

Kind of fascinating to see these views and how different mine are.  I don't have an age that I get rid of players due to old age.  I do have a rule that any player over the age of 24 has to have a "mentor quality" personality and I move players on at that age or if they get complacent after that age.  They also must have at least decent leadership qualities by 24.  I value these things so much that I stick with players even when they are declining as evidenced by my League 2 level 33 year old vice-captain with a Model Pro personality who still plays regularly and managed a 7.22 rating this season in my Swansea side who are getting promoted to the Premier League next season. 

 

[Deisler26]

25+

[crpcarrot]

now ive been in the PL for 3-4 seasosn but am also thinking players can keep playing as long as their physical atts are OK.

also there doesn't seem to be a point in buying any player who is 26 or over unless he is the finished article.

 

[stevie_G_32201]

29/30

[Cometdude]

I only sell when performances start to drop. I've had 40 year old strikers still doing the business for me. I fear change.

[Rashidi]

30 unless they are a club legend who has followed me through the tiers, then he stays until he wants to retire
I have a self-imposed salary cap as I like taking players with low world reps. Once these players start asking for salaries that break the ceiling they are off.  This creates exceptions where I might sell someone when they are young. My fav role to sell are keepers, you can usually sell them easily.

[crpcarrot]

yeah i ve sold a few keepers in my save bought by top tier club to be never used again. made some good money from that. they were good when i was in lower tier but never though they were that good.

[busngabb]

On 17/05/2022 at 15:47, Deisler26 said:

25+

Haha. Madness. Most players won't even be at their peak by then.

I'm going to assume that was sarcasm, but the fascination with youngsters has always intruged me with Football Manager. I understand the excitement of bringing through a young player and them going on to do well, but when I look at some of the lineups people are using and it's just 17 wonderkids without a mental stat point between them. The game doesn't punish this enough I feel.

There are some absolute gems out there in the game. James Ward-Prowse for example. He's 30 on my current save and has 19 assists and it's only Christmas. I've used James Rodriguez extensively on FM22, often keeping him until he's 35+. Neymar at 35 is better than most 26 year old strikers. Toni Kross at 35 is still almost unplayable.

The game should require you to maintain a decent squad balance. A sprinkling of youth, an average age of 25-28 across the team should be the ideal and older players should be required to hold the team together. When I see lineups with two 18 year old central midfielders, a 19 year old striker, two 19 year old wingers and a 17 year old at centre back it makes me laugh. They'd get hammered in real life. Don't throw the class of 96 at me either as that squad was also balanced with older players. Parker, Irwin, Bruce, Pallister, McClair etc.

[2feet]

I buy young players and develop them to around 23/24 then sell.

Because otherwise they don't seem to improve much after that age and are generally peaked in attributes by that age.

Should i be more patient and hope that their consistency, professionalism etc improves with more experience?

[fc.cadoni]

28+