***The Official Football Manager Thread***

[Suntan Superman]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

well after getting humiliated by Arsenal in the UCL Playoff, we ended up topping a surprisingly difficult group, I thought it was going to be easier going into the games, and it definitely wasn't. Managed to get ousted by Stuttgart in the cup as seen above, the board are surprisingly not too concerned with that. We're sitting third in the league, there's been some bizarre results so far, but Bayern are top and we're currently level with Leverkusen headed into the winter break. Napoli is who awaits us after the January break.

[rsnomar05]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

The board provided over $200 million in transfer budget for this offseason, so I decided to upgrade at goalkeeper and snagged David De Gea from Manchester United for over $100 million. We should be set at goalkeeper for the next decade, and that's a position it seemed we were a bit weak in this past year.

Over $100 million on a keeper? WOW. I don't think I've ever spent more than $20 mil on a keeper, and in FM 15 all my keepers at Roma came on free transfers. De Gea has great attributes and is young, though, so you could have your GK for the next 15 years.

[ImTellinTim]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

When you're Madrid you can pay for names, that's for sure.

Just a word of advice when you move on to somewhere that doesn't print money... There's almost always a player out there with similar stats for a fraction of the cost.

[rsnomar05]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

When you're Madrid you can pay for names, that's for sure.

Just a word of advice when you move on to somewhere that doesn't print money... There's almost always a player out there with similar stats for a fraction of the cost.

Great advice. And with GKs, you can get wonderkids at that position for cheap and develop them, and then you can spend the big bucks on more important positions of need.

[Suntan Superman]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Speaking of cheap signings... I just smashed my club transfer record, and my normal £5m limit



We had a hole at left back, hopefully this works.

[Perceptor]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

September was a pretty dominant month I'd say

[superjames1992]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Over $100 million on a keeper? WOW. I don't think I've ever spent more than $20 mil on a keeper, and in FM 15 all my keepers at Roma came on free transfers. De Gea has great attributes and is young, though, so you could have your GK for the next 15 years.

Well, to be fair, I don't really know what I'm doing, haha. At least I'm set for a long time, as you said.

When you're Madrid you can pay for names, that's for sure.

Just a word of advice when you move on to somewhere that doesn't print money... There's almost always a player out there with similar stats for a fraction of the cost.

Gotcha. Yeah, I need to get more into scouting. I guess it doesn't matter as much at Real Madrid, but most teams can't afford those kinds of transfers. At least De Gea is Spanish, so the move makes sense.

[ImTellinTim]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Also, never settle for a ridiculous amount in the first negotiation. You can always walk away and then start tapping a guy up in the media. Could upset him enough that the team just wants to sell him. Either later in the transfer window or the next transfer window.

[Suntan Superman]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Also, never settle for a ridiculous amount in the first negotiation. You can always walk away and then start tapping a guy up in the media. Could upset him enough that the team just wants to sell him. Either later in the transfer window or the next transfer window.

I am so incredibly guilty of this, I did it with Trapp and managed to get him from PSG for only £1m, it could raise to £5m, but most likely will not.

[Perceptor]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Also, never settle for a ridiculous amount in the first negotiation. You can always walk away and then start tapping a guy up in the media. Could upset him enough that the team just wants to sell him. Either later in the transfer window or the next transfer window.

This, but as Suntan said, I'm guilty as well, but more in contract negotiations. I am learning that with transfers, it's better to be patient although when you're a big team with lots of cash, it's not as big a deal.

Grats on De Gea. He's a super keeper on this game and he is Spanish, which will help with the quotas at least. $100 million is a lot, but unlike position players, keepers can play at a high level for a long long time.

[rsnomar05]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

In January (when playing at a big club of course, since I currently can't afford to scout anyone at Strasbourg) I send my scouts out to evaluate a ton of players in positions of need for 3 months. when the scouting assignments finish, I pick the players I want to target and declare my interest in the press. I couple this with low-ball offers that the clubs will never accept, hoping that the players get upset that they weren't allowed to leave. I then start raising the offers, hoping the player will get so fed up he goes to his teammates and causes dressing room discord.

[rsnomar05]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Strasbourg year one update:

My entire bench just came to me, one after another, demanding I give them first team football and threatening to get their teammates involved. I managed to placate some of them with "player x is in the form of his life..." but I really hope the malcontents don't derail my promotion campaign. I'm in first place with a 6 point cushion in January, and given all the draws in the league, I would probably have to lose 6 consecutive matches to forfeit first place, but this is still not ideal.

[NoDakHusker]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Ultimately settled on Rangers for my first save on FM16. Looking forward to re-establishing them as the top team in Scotland.

[Bellsprout]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

As I should've suspected, my plan of signing 34 year old Arjen Robben to supersub for my wingers (Neymar and Oxlade-Chamberlain) has ended with him not giving a **** that both are in other worldly form and demanding regular first team football.

Like, really. I haven't lost or drawn all season, I'm 9 for 9 in the Prem, I have twice as many goals as the next best team, and you wanna try and break that momentum up?

I should've known better than to try this experiment. Old superstars are annoying.

[ubernoob]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

That's okay, I made a stupid rookie mistake too and I've been playing this game for a long time.

I started as Torino (picked them because no loan debt in Serie A) for fun. Pretty much no transfer budget, pretty tiny wage budget.

Get an offer from Chelsea for my starting RB before the season. Comes out to 11Mil with future incentives (probably ~2-3M worth.)

Coolio, I'll do it. He's 23, but that money would be a great help, and RB is my strongest position. Goodbye, Nikola Maksimovic.

Oh, what's this Bruno Peres? You're angry that I sold the guy in front of you and you could get more playing time? Whatever, **** you too then dude. You're sold for 12M to Liverpool (with incentives potentially going to ~17.5M.) Dunno why you'd get angry about getting more playing time, since you're 25.

So I'm sitting here with like 20M in the transfer budget.

Thinking to myself "Nice, I can bring in a solid RB for rotation and find an AMR since I have nobody there." By nobody, I mean nobody. I had to go out of my way to sign a ****ty Kader Keita to start for me.

Make an offer of ~10M for Sime Vrsaljko that's accepted. Contract agreed upon. Nice, there's my RB.

Find an AMR from Steaua (Alexandru Chipciu) that I can rely upon for a couple years while I find my AMR of the future. Make a 3.5M offer, accepted.

Oh, what's this? No wage budget to make him an acceptable offer? Fine, fine. I'll move that slider so I can make an offer.

Whoops, big mistake. Can't move the slider back so LOL you don't get Vrsaljko, you don't get Chipciu AND you have zero transfer budget for the year. Have fun. **** you, FM. **** you.

On the bright side, they'll be happy with my wage usage because my budget went from ~350k to ~690k.