Help Buying Players

[steve.battisti]

Hi all. If you can believe it, I'm thousands of hours into FM and I've never bought a player before. I tend to hang around the lower leagues a lot, so really free transfers is all I've ever done. I'm finally managing a team in top league in Denmark, and I have a whopping (for me) 370k transfer budget. And I realized I have no idea how to buy players.

So, for example, I came across this kid, who already at 16 would be the best midfielder in my squad. Denmark has rules about players being trained at club before the age of 21, so extra bonus for me. His transfer value says 0-10k, but it has the line through it that I think means my info is out of date. I went to offer him a transfer, and here's what the other team suggested:

At this point, I don't even know how to understand if this is a good deal. Are there typical things I should do here to counter effectively? Like, should I remove the % of next sale? Is there any chance I will be able to talk them down? Should I shift the money around so that more is on installments or whatever?

Does anyone know of a video or post that gives an overview of how to effectively negotiate transfers?

I'm not really looking for "glitches" to trick the game, just looking to understand negotiating transfers better.

Thanks all!

[DarJ]

I think the starting point is always to ask the player’s agent because you get information regarding the player’s interest in joining you, potential asking price and wage demands. You can also reduce the wage demand if you talk to the agent.

By asking the agent you can already know if you can afford the player or not

[turnip]

To add to that, what a clause is worth depends heavily on the situation you're in.

If a player is likely to get better at your team, and there's a good chance of selling him for actual money, a % of Next Sale clause you agreed to sign him is a problem because you won't get all of that money. But, if including that clause lets you bring the overall cash value of the transfer down to a point where you can sign the player, and he will be an important part of your team, then the clause might be incredibly good for you. 

[NineCloudNine]

Reduce those numbers, and/or switch more of it to future instalments and/or reduce the fee and add performance related payments. Then press ‘suggest terms’. If your first offer is accepted, you bid too much. If not, they will cone back with a counter-offer. You can usually go through a lot of rounds of this.

You may well not find a deal acceptable to both parties, which is fine. You need to have a very clear idea what you can afford and be prepared to walk away if the selling club won’t agree to that.

Future and performance-related fees can punt a lot of the risk into the future, but make sure you can afford them if they come to fruition. The total potential value of a deal with performance-related clauses will be higher than a bid without because of the risk to the selling team.

Edited February 16 by NineCloudNine