Struggling with Buying Players

[steve.battisti]

Hi all. I'm in my first ever transfer window with an actual transfer budget. Usually I just play in lower leagues for a while, get bored, and start over, so I never actually get up to the point where I need to buy players.

And I'm struggling. When you've been doing nothing but free transfers and one-year contracts, it's so hard to pull the trigger on purchases!

 

When I look at the players my scouts have found, I find that the vast majority of the players seem to fall into these categories:

 

• Worse than players in my squad, so not interested.
• Comparable to existing players in my squad in star level / attributes . . . so why do I need to sign these guys exactly?
• Better than my existing players, but either completely not interested, or out of my price range.
• Players with lower current ability than my current senior squad, but good potential, most of whom are out of my price range.

 

For reference, I'm definitely a small fish in a big pond. I am in Danish 3F league, and have about 350k in transfer budget and 680k in salary commitments. The next lowest salary in the league is 3.7m, so over five times my salary, and they go up from there to 33m!

 

Can anyone give me some strategies on how you would approach signing players in this scenario?

 

Thanks!

[NineCloudNine]

Look at your squad and decide where you think you need to improve. That might be overall quality in a position, depth, a particular role or player you’d like to have as an option, some experience, or a player with something your squad lacks (eg pace, free kicks, anything).

Also have a good idea of the sort of character and attributes you want. Personality matters. Do you look for determination, workrate, teamwork? Do you need stamina?

This helps you narrow the field. You can use player search with various filters to identify players. The players there depend on your scouting range and knowledge, so you can think of it as ‘all the players my scouts have heard of’. Sorting them by reputation will give you a crude starting point. From there scout players individually to get a better idea of personality and a clearer view of their attributes.

Look for a player’s squad status. A fringe player at a bigger club might move to you for guaranteed playing time. Clubs are more willing to sell players with less time left on contracts. Asking a player’s agent about interest gives you a good guide on whether they would sign, how much for and on what money, but be honest about your level of interest or you’ll annoy the agent.

Edited February 18 by NineCloudNine

[turnip]

It can be hard to improve a team if your club is 'smaller' than the others in your league.

Go and look at some other squads to see if any players are unhappy. A player who is unhappy because of lack of playing time is more likely to join your club than they were before they got upset. 

The other important thing to remember if you're a small fish in a big pond, is to use loans. Go and check out anyone in the big teams who's available for loan and see if they're interested. If you can't afford them, shortlist them anyway, because you can sometimes get them for literally nothing at the end of the transfer window. 

The last tip - because you're managing in Denmark - is to go and look abroad. The game is telling me that all African nations are treated as EU (meaning you can pay them poverty wages), so go and check out the U20 squads of some of the bigger African nations* for players still at domestic clubs, scout them and see if any of them are interested in a move.

 

* - with your transfer budget, you probably can't afford players from Egypt, DR Congo or Tunisia. 

[steve.battisti]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the tips! 

[st4lz]

@steve.battisti You can take a look at my website https://moneyballfm.com. You can get some ideas there.

You will probably have the most success with the free youth players released by the bigger clubs and loans. Use trials whenever you can to explore free agents. There are always hidden gems available in different ways, it's good to check all the possibilities and decide what works for you. The bigger your club is, the transfers with fees will make more sense as your scouting team will be better and the available talent pool smaller.

Good luck!

[Hovis Dexter]

When looking at players to loan try concentrating on those who are in final year their contracts. Towards the end of the the year you may be able to negotiate with them to join you permanently when their contracts expire thus getting the players without playing any transfer fees.