shd34_216_42

Congratulations on staying up (and not having to deal with Stalybridge Celtic anymore). How's the contact situation now for the team?

Board wanted a bigger stadium, so off to Bournemouth where the team will have to figure out how to make it an island. I look forward to the Caribbean tour once the team is established enough.

You made profit because of the FA Cup game, otherwise you would have lost money for the month. Still, 1200 is good attendance for a home game.

1.1k/game is something like 45k/yr at your level (depending on cup performances), so he's probably gone unless you can afford something like 800/wk, which is unlikely if you want to keep salary costs at 200-300k/yr. (Your part time offer is about 450/wk as an equivalent, so that explains the lack of interest.) Ticket prices/season ticket prices are relevant here, it's also fair to assume that your attendances will be higher so you might be able to afford more than 200k/yr but obviously being sustainable beats spending recklessly.

Can you offer part-time contracts yet? (And you didn't need a million euros of player salary to get promoted!)

The big issue with going pro is the youth contracts go from cheap to not cheap. (In FM22 it went from ~5 pounds/wk to ~150 pounds/wk, it might be a bit higher now.) I think you would need a balance of 1.2 million euros or so to make it viable for the board to consider it (or have a tycoon, like some teams that keep failing to be promoted) and then you would have to be far more selective about which youth you keep from intakes. Realistically, I think you have the same issue in that you really need to be promoted to make going pro a consideration. I'm guessing the allowed free agent options are terrible.

I actually use his database on FM22 and from experience I usually have the opposite problem in that everyone wants actual contracts (after a promotion of course), and the non-contract players tend to stay longer. Interesting what two years can change.

I wonder what happens if you delay the new contract for youth players until absolutely necessary, given that the non-contract at 17 doesn't keep the player around that long if at all. What database are you using, out of curiosity?

Tycoons make sense (I'm also guessing those teams are fully professional rather than semi-pro), although you would think the tycoons would be interested in bigger teams. Probably churning through coaches like crazy for those teams as well.

You should really sign the good youth to non-contracts at the very least once they are about to turn 17. Probably still going to lose them at some point but might be able to hold on to the player for a few months at least. My typical rule for point requirements/game in a balanced league is 1.7 for playoffs, which translates to about 72 for a 42-game season. Not sure if you'll make it, but at least you didn't need to spend a million like some other teams.

I like how you can offer coaches part-time contracts but not players.

If you can't offer part time contracts, you probably have to get promoted or actually keep a high overall balance (which means not asking for facilities upgrades). At least you have Stalybridge Celtic to make you feel better, at that level of spending compared to the rest of the league I would expect nothing less than automatic promotion. (I'm guessing Vauxhall and Stalybridge are actually professional rather than semi-pro.) Do you try to offer a new contract when teams bid on your players? This may be the closest thing to a solution that you have.

120/wk is probably something you couldn't compete with anyways. Out of curiosity, are all the players on other teams in your division on non-contracts as well?

At least you tried. To be fair, he's definitely not worth 350/wk as a staff member at your level, so sadly the right move is to move on. Might be interesting to follow his post-playing career though.

Does Kevin O'Connor have coaching attributes? Would be a nice way to honor his contributions if that's an option.

Looks like home games in the FA Cup are way more lucrative than away games, shows how good your attendance figures are compared to other teams. The drawback is potential fatigue from the extra games, but the money potential makes it worthwhile. FA Trophy is worth caring about for a few rounds at least, although obviously it's second priority.

Time to make some money in the FA Cup.

See, even the game wants everything to be all about islands. Being debt-free is a real accomplishment at that level.

85/wk is roughly 4,420/yr, so in a 20-team league in your tier that compares to a minimum of ~4,100 for a non-contract with 100 appearance fee. (I'm counting the 38 league games, the first FA Cup game, the first League Cup game, and the first FA Trophy game.) Of course there's still appearance fees for semi-pro contracts, so assuming something like 25 appearance fee that means somewhere around 5,445 on wages and appareance fees alone. That might be significant enough to relocate, although obviously the game doesn't model cost of living and other factors. Your reputation probably went down because you have what is likely a relatively high reputation level for your league, so those "upset" losses/draws take away up to 1-2 points at a time. It's not much, but it adds up over time. Reputation does have an effect on attendance as well as season ticket and ticket prices, but at your level it's probably going to be a minor impact at best, and really the only fix is promotion so I don't think you can do much about it.

That makes more sense than the screenshot claim. I'm guessing that they are going far beyond expanding to the minimum, given you have money, the club can borrow more money if necessary, and that you would likely get more than 12.5k in attendance, so you'll probably be ground sharing for a season or so. I like the representation of island nations in the youth intake.

85 euros/wk is probably more than what he would have made in appearance fees with you, and the club reputation tends to be very inconsistent that far down so it's possible their reputation is close enough to your team. I'm actually surprised that you aren't able to offer proper semi-pro contracts, and more so that more people haven't left given the non-contract situation.

Game must be glitching, shouldn't be facing Blackburn twice at home. Promotion is looking likely, can't wait for the ground sharing because of stadium expansion and where you end up when that happens.

You balance the higher wage demands with higher revenues (you should have higher ticket/season ticket prices and more attendance because of the promotion). The bigger issue is probably holding on to the players you want to keep.

I see you've discovered the glory of youth intakes in the lower tiers. It's a shame you can't win the FA Vase anymore, but honestly I think you would rather be promoted.

IIRC Isle of Man has really good attendance compared to other teams in the same level, so you might be in better shape than it seems because you'll have good gate receipts. (I appreciate you adding attendance numbers to your view.) I'm guessing the youth setup probably takes the in-game reputation value along with the current league competition into account, and typically your reputation will be increasing every season so the costs should be going up every year. Yes, that's the smallest league. Nice cup run to make it to the 4th Qualifying Round of the FA Cup, the other cups aren't nearly as lucrative but it's more games to keep the backups happy.