Club turning fully professional . . .

[stockwellpete]

I am playing as St Albans City currently. We started off in the Vanarama South  and we are part-time, training just twice a week (4 slots in total). In our first season we got promoted to the Vanarama National league. So I asked the board if they were prepared to become fully professional. They said no as they did not have enough money. When I joined the club it had a financial surplus of around £100K. By the beginning of the second season that financial surplus had increased to around £500K, partly because we had a good run in the FA Cup.

 

Is it going to be possible for me to eventually turn the club fully professional? Is it catered for in the game? Or are the board continually going to say no? What might the financial surplus need to be to get the club into an area where turning fully professional is a possibility?

 

Just to say, I have no problem with there being a mixture of professional and semi-professional clubs at both Vanarama National and Regional levels. This is true to real life. About half a dozen clubs in the Vanarama South this season will be full-time (e.g. Yeovil, Havant and Waterlooville) and I think there will be four part-time clubs in the Vanarama National (Oxford City, Wealdstone, Dorking Wanderers and Maidenhead United).

[XaW]

Yes, you can turn fully professional. From my personal experience you either need to get promoted into League Two, or have a balance of about £1m. In addition, the personality (and mostly ambition, I think) of your board will impact how likely it is. The more ambitious, the higher the chance to having it accepted. I've also had boards that never accepted the risk of going fully professional before we gained promotion into the league system.

I am currently playing as Beaconsfield in a youth only challenge (documented here), and I'm in my first season in the VNL after gaining promotion from the VNS in the 5th season there (pluss one holiday season to get Beaconsfield promotion into the playable leagues), and I'm semi-pro and not very likely to go professional any time soon as we are losing money each month, and are already 200k in the red... I also need a run in the FA Cup... Anyway, I'm in sort of the same boat as you.  

[stockwellpete]

2 minutes ago, XaW said:

Yes, you can turn fully professional. From my personal experience you either need to get promoted into League Two, or have a balance of about £1m. In addition, the personality (and mostly ambition, I think) of your board will impact how likely it is. The more ambitious, the higher the chance to having it accepted. I've also had boards that never accepted the risk of going fully professional before we gained promotion into the league system.

I am currently playing as Beaconsfield in a youth only challenge (documented here), and I'm in my first season in the VNL after gaining promotion from the VNS in the 5th season there (pluss one holiday season to get Beaconsfield promotion into the playable leagues), and I'm semi-pro and not very likely to go professional any time soon as we are losing money each month, and are already 200k in the red... I also need a run in the FA Cup... Anyway, I'm in sort of the same boat as you.  

Ok thanks. I don't think a second promotion is on the cards for St Albans City this season. The board have just asked me to avoid relegation and I think a mid-table finish is most likely. But I can still try and get that financial surplus moving in the right direction.