The board can pound sand

[ScotchWhisky]

Ok, I know everyone runs into an occasion where the board sells your player against your wishes, but it's suddenly become ridiculous.  I've worked a bottom feeder team into the Premier division and have had them stably there for about five seasons now.  I finally...  finally get a young dream striker.  Very fast with decent finishing.  Only 19.  What does the board do?  They sell him for under $2 million.  He'd have been worth 4-5 in a couple years.  Generally speaking, my team wobbled between $1 million in the black and $1 million in debt.  Hell, my transfer budgets was $1.5 million, my wage $80k per week (and I'm spending less than $45k per week), so finances are fine.  I'd have paid all that for this player!  First time I successfully protested, but the second time, with a slightly better offer, there was no option.  I was able to get them to add a loan-back clause at least to finish out the season.  Wound up 5th, which qualifies for ECCII or whatever it is (sorry, I don't know European cup names exactly).  But that too should be a financial windfall based on the collective bonuses option.

My young (24) Central defender won player of the year.  I kept refusing offer after offer and finally, the board accepted a $2.3 million offer for him.  This time, because two offers came at once, I couldn't find an option to protest their accepting the offer.  $2.3 million sounds like a lot, except apparently there was a 40% sale clause.  Which is odd, because I swore I stopped making any offers or accepting any negotiations with a sell-on clause.  Anyways, I had just signed another start central defender.  However, I was retraining him to DR and making my DR a solid backup.  Well, that plans gone to hell and now I still have a good defense, except there is no longer any real depth.  To make matters worse, the Norwegian premier transfer window closed the day prior and it was a Swedish team that got him, so I couldn't even look for another star player.

I hope FM '25 adds more logical arguments in cases like this.  It's like, the entire point of a football team is to win matches, titles, and cups.  How am I supposed to do that when my best players keep getting taken by a moronic board?  I'm sure this happens at times in real life, but I can only imagine managers can say "hey... wait a minute... do you really want to sell a future star that will pack butts in the seats?"  Part of me wonders if ChatGPT or something similar will eventually expand interactions in ways we cannot imagine...

 

[podunkboy]

I had the board sell my top prospect to a rival because of "an offer too good to pass up". Because of where the % of transfer funds available was set (even though we weren't in dire straights), there wasn't enough in the budget for a quality replacement. I was so angry I terminated all the staff contracts and resigned my position. Later ended up at a rival club, started poaching all my old players. 

[ScotchWhisky]

On 27/11/2023 at 12:31, podunkboy said:

I had the board sell my top prospect to a rival because of "an offer too good to pass up". Because of where the % of transfer funds available was set (even though we weren't in dire straights), there wasn't enough in the budget for a quality replacement. I was so angry I terminated all the staff contracts and resigned my position. Later ended up at a rival club, started poaching all my old players. 

Haha, that's awesome!  I think I did that once when I knew I was going to be fired, although I think I just loaded the earlier save and saved my job.  Either way, there is some satisfaction in believing the board, which really only exists in our minds, is furious and has complete egg on their face. 

My biggest issue is that both of the players my board sold from underneath me were homegrown stars.  The Norwegian Premier division only allows 9 non-homegrown players and it's not easy to find these diamonds in the rough.  So yeah, I can usually find an adequate replacement if I don't worry about homegrown status, but my roster is full of non-homegrown players now.