A star player requested to leave. Do I have to do it?

[briggm]

I was playing the first season of a career with Crystal Palace and Wilfried Zaha wanted to leave. After he turned down offers of a new contract a couple of times, the board instructed me to sell him as keeping him was going to have a negative impact on the team. I started getting offers of around 6 million pounds from various clubs, but since I had no intention of selling him anyway (despite what the board said) I figured I'd counter each offer with £20 million. Most of them flat out turned this down of course, but I remember one team countered my counter offer with an offer of £10 million. Still I declined.

So thinking that I'd keep hold of Zaha until at least the end of the season, I suddenly got a message from the board 2 days before the trade deadline telling me that they'd taken matters into their own hands and sold him to Arsenal for £6 million. Gah!

[OpTiOnMaStA]

I've had quite a few experiences with this.

I have had a player demand a transfer and had the board sell him where I took action and once where I didn't. Shinji Kagawa out of the blue demanded a transfer from ManU and I had 2 clubs willing to buy him at $40 million yet the board sold him to Man City for $32 million without my consent.

I also had the board buy a player without my consent for more than my transfer budget allotted for. FYI - you keep your whole budget too.

[_ChicoBass]

What I did, is I reloaded the week before he requested a transfer and placed him on the short loan list before he requested a transfer. After that he didn't request anything! I just denied all the offers and everything went good

[burth179]

There is a way to get around this when it occurs (at least in my experiences of trying this method). When you get the out of the blue message that the player wants to leave, save the game before you move forward again. And don't save it again until after you get the message from the board.

If you sim forward a few days later (I think it's 2 or maybe 3 days later) you will get a message from the board stating whether they are leaving the decision up to you, or if they are forcing you to sell the player. If they are forcing you to sell, quit the game and reload from the save point.

That message from the board is random, sometimes they decide to sell and sometimes they let you do it. But each time you reload it can be different. Just reload from the saving point enough times (or if you are lucky you won't have to reload it at all) and they will eventually let you decide the player's fate, and so you can keep the player.

I've done this a few times and each time it has worked out. One guy I had to reload the save like 5 times, but eventually I was able to keep him.

I guess you can sort of think of this as cheating the game, although I don't because I find it ridiculous that a player would want to leave out of the blue like that. If the game is gonna try to cheat me, I'll cheat it back.

I do like how the game will have stories build up over a month or 2 in the fall about how a player may be unsettled, and then eventually will decide if he wants to leave or stay, that is kind of realistic and it gives you time to think about a replacement. I can live with losing players like that.

However when they just decide out of the blue that they have to leave by the end of the transfer window (usually a week or less before the window ends) it is ridiculous and totally unrealistic barring some extenuating circumstance. Plus, 9 times out of 10 it is your best player or player that is in the best form that demands to leave. And often times his moral was "very happy" the day before he asks to leave. It's just silly to think he would be "very happy" one day and then demanding a transfer the next.

[thbends]

Well I sold Aguero off my Manchester City team and used the money I got for him to buy Neymar. So Aguero can suck it.