Player sales

[danej]

The aim of this thread is to discuss how one could deal with player sales. I recently realized that this can actually be a quite complicated topic. You can deal with it in so many different ways.

My personal aim is to find a balanced and rather realistic approach to it. Which corresponds to the way of playing the game that I generally prefer: Avoiding optimizing things, which is rather easy and leads to predictable and rather boring success. Instead I look for a balanced and mostly realistic approach to the game in general. Preferably an approach that leads to a performance level that is on par with board expectations and where there is a real risk of getting sacked, at least periodically throughout the save.

So, back to the topic of player sales. For a long time now, I have dealt with this in a quite optimizing way without even realizing it. I guess I have done sort of what you can learn from people like Zeeland and Lollujo on Youtube, I believe both of them have made videos about how to maximize interest in a player that you want to sell, and how to maximize the price you get for him. Essentially I gradually lower the asking price, repeatedly offer the player out untill someone puts in a bid. Then I lauch sort of an auction where I repeatedly raise the asking price untill only one club is left biddng. In the process cancelling earlier accepted bids because I received a higher bid from another in the meantime.

This approach might now be totally unrealistic. Although perhaps unrealistic to some extent, I don't know how many buying clubs in the real world would be fine with having their accepted bid cancelled 1-2 days later and being told "you can still get the player, but now I want more money for him". Anyway, I am getting the feeling my mentioned optimizing approach to player sales is sort of OP and borderline cheating. The described approach probably leads me to getting much better deals for outgoing players than what AI led teams get then they try to sell their players. And I basically don't want to overperform/cheat like that. As mentioned, in most aspects of the game I aim for performance levels on par with board expectations and AI led teams in order to avoid easy, predictable, boring success.

So I am considering dropping the approach mentioned above and instead experimenting with more suboptimal approaches to players sales.

So far, I have come up with these ideas that I consider experimenting with:

1. The most radical approach, Head Coach-style approach to player sales (and contracts). Delegate everything regarding player sales and player contract renewals to staff. Which probably means that the club will get mediocre deals when selling players. And that the club will generally sell/loan out too little deadwood and thus waste a lot of budget, because the club is stuck with players who overpaid compared to their actual importance to the club.

2. Mostly like option 1, but less radical. I have the option to block player sales. And I can extend player contracts so I won't risk losing good and not overpaid players on a free or for a low transfer fee because they don't have much left of their contract.

3. Handling sales myself, but somehow limiting my negotiating powers. For example forbidding myself to raise the asking price and repeatedly offering out the same player in an auction style with an upgonig price spiral. Instead fixing the asking price to the first accepted offer and accept matching bids from any interested clubs, never asking for more.

Any ideas and input would be welcome.

[phd_angel]

You got it. I'm like Stalin, I like complete power over everything.