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The recent transfer window has just passed us by, lacking in the excitement that has caught us in previous windows. Lack of money flowing through the clubs this year could be one cause of the quiet activity. Around £30million was through passed English clubs this year, compared to £170 million just last year. In times of financial trouble though how can your Football Manager side stay in the black?
1. Play the market
Within Football, the most valuable commodity are footballers, if you play the transfer market well and mine talent effectively you can create a sustainable business model that will help bring cash and success.
Free transfers can be a quick buck, when contracts are expiring look for those players who have value and snap them up as soon as possible, starting your search in December. These players could spend a few weeks on your bench or on loan before you can sell them for a 90% profit. Look at your reserve side as a get rich quick scheme sitting on your assets ready to be shipped out. Although do be warned that this tactic isn’t something you should do on a massive scale as their is a danger of upsetting squad morale.
Developing a good youth policy can have certain financial gains, it is inevitably that not all these players are going to make it into your first team. But if they are developed well you will be able to be produce good enough players for sides below yours, selling young players on at a profit. Plan well, stick in clauses to the transfer negotiations that will see players still making you money long after they have left the club, as important as quick cash is long term sustainability can bring you longer term success. This is a tactic also used by smaller clubs who don’t have the budget to spend big on players, good youth academies have been the main source of long term income for the likes of Ajax, Leeds and Everton.
2. Season friendlies
Don’t just limit yourself to pre-season friendlies or as just a way to get your players fit for a season ahead. For smaller sides they can be a good way of making money. Spain and Italy have huge gaps during Christmas, many other nations hold their pre-seasons during the winter months. Great times to hit those sides up when you have a gap in your fixtures. You don’t have to field a strong side, if you are worried about injuries. But getting fans to your ground can be a nice Christmas present for yourself.
More reading: Friendlies, the tactical playground
3. Buy back clauses
Buy back clauses can be a way to make a small amounts of cash quickly. You have a few young players who you are not sure whether will make it in your side or not. Sell them with a buy back clause, you will get cash and save on wages. If they make it great you can buy him back and avoid huge rises in value. If not that is quick money in the bank. Also check if your club has anyone on a buy back clause already set in the game. In Football Manager 2009, Barragán clause allowed Liverpool to snap him up for £475k and he was often put into the first team straight away. But just like point number one, get someone back cheap enough and sell them on again!
4. Contract negotiations
Don’t just stick with the contracts that you have already got your players on, don’t just cave in to demands straight away. If you keep your players happy they are always going to be more likely to stay even if you offer them less wages. The small clauses, pay rises and sign on fees can really eat into your budget until it is too late for you to go back on that 5 year deal you just gave your backup striker. If you negotiate with your lower league sides and try and get deals below their current contracts even if they still have a couple of years left, it can give you a pretty reasonable amount of cash to spend elsewhere.
5. Loaning out your reserves
Reserve players, all they do is sit around eating up your wage budget. Obviously they are more then that, but for players that you want to keep on the books but are not getting first team action can be put to use elsewhere. Careful planning can allow you to send out players, making savings on your wage bill as well as netting yourself a little bit of cash in fees if you aren’t going to require the player as backup for the first team squad. You also get the added bonus of the players grabbing first team experience, very important when developing your sides.
Share your money making tips
Leave your comments below. How do you save or make money in Football Manager 2010? Would you rather spend the frugal Wenger way or would you look out for the giants of Europe as Real Madrid would?
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{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the tips! It will really help me with my West Brom side. What I had to do is give a big player up to be able to get a good amount of money (I actually didn’t want to sell him but the board sold him without even consulting me) and then with that money I bought several youngsters that would develop into quality players. When I played with Arsenal once I loaned out about 10 reserve players. Most of them were young so it didn’t really affect my first team plans and for each of the player’s that I loaned out I made the team who loaned him out pay all of his wages plus pay me half out what he is worth (Some of them I had to negotiate) and that gave me a lot of money.
.-= Bilal Ahmad´s last blog ..Funny and Random things on Football Manager =-.
Intellegence in the finances at a club can really do you good. The good thing that Football Manager allows you to do effectively is to be able to sell a squad of players and if you know the right players you can bring a squad in just as good as the last for half the price you sold the players for.
I did debate putting in another point, talking about a mass sale of your squad,to then replace them with a whole new squad. But if you did that the change in the side would take the time to gel.
Point 4 really is too condensed! When I said mention about clauses etc. I meant mention to go through your entire squad and get every automatic pay rise removed. I like to budget well with my wages and can usually afford to give my players pay rises but not if my budget is dwindling away because of hefty automatic clauses.
Also if I loan youngsters/reserves out I try to get at least 10% of their wages paid by the other team. If I’m loaning a player into the club I refuse to pay a loan fee and also refuse to contribute wages unless I really have to!
.-= Q.´s last blog ..Rangers – Season 10/11 =-.
I had written that part of the article before I spoke to you and was going towards it on a slightly different angle, but it allowed you to come over and give a great comment like you did
But I fully agree with your loan policy. Bigger clubs are 9/10 going to give you their players on the cheap. I will only pay a loan fee if I really want a player at the club and that is the only way I am going to get them. I think that is better for when your a bigger team buying from teams of a similar standard to yourself.
The longer you wait to renew a contract the less a player will ask for. But you are always at risk of other clubs coming in with pre-contracts. In Brazil players cant be approached for bosmans so you can get players’ wages right down. I waited until the last week of Juan’s contract and I got him from 25k wages to 10k. I gave him the 25k one year before like a fool but that massive wagecut let me bring in a few more players.
.-= Skacel´s last blog ..John Terry dropped as England captain. =-.
Great tip there for anyone that is going to play in the Brazilian league, is it the same for most of the South American leagues and is it similar to the English system where by foreign clubs would be still able to approach the players 6 months before, but english team have to wait until a month before?
In Brazil no teams can approach your players not even Brazilian ones, in Argentina I think it works as it does in Europe with teams being able to approach six month before, not sure whatever leagues that applies to. So you should look into it o/
.-= Skacel´s last blog ..Beetlejuice =-.
I start my game with an idea that i’m going to have a transferbudget of 2 million euros per year and then sign many players on free transfer. i usually sell many of the new signings in december/januari and in some cases i’ve gotten over 6 million f.ex Nelson Rivas, Matteo Brighi and Federico Insúa. One other thing is to not have any feeder clubs that will cost you money, for it’s cheeper to have a local partnership that will benefit your youth-team players and your club budget.
I think feeder clubs don’t take too much money away from you to have too much of a problem I think having good feeder clubs can benefit you as well as themselves.
But I do like buying in cheap players and sending them out for more money. It can be a real winner, just make sure you don’t mess around too much with squad harmony.
One thing I found that can be a bit of a money spinner along the lines of signing a big name, is signing a player from Japan, China or Nth/Sth Korea. It’s not great, but you get a boost in Shirt Sales from the players home country, which for the smaller teams could be quite a nice bonus – this has worked well with my Bayern and Roma Squads, about to try it with my Motherwell Squad to see if the same can be done with less money.
Its a tactic has been used by lots of Premiership clubs already so it must have decent value to it. Remember when Chang beer signed the sponsorship deal with Everton and they got two players over with the deal at the same time
and Inamoto when he played for the Gunners was always shown on Japanese TV even when it was just reserve games.
Pre-season games – start organising them the minute your players go on holiday, that way you get the best choice of dates and teams.
Pre season cups and leagues – remember not just the games including your team are at your ground, so if you have Yeovil(you), Aston Villa, Celtic, Newcastle , Celtic vs Newcastle is at your ground too, which is more than likely going to sell out.
I allow myself one or two cups which I know Im not going to win /benefit from but with huge clubs coming, you get the chance to fill your stadium.!!!!
@Ben barrett: Fantastic advice Ben, thanks for that, I think next pre-season I am going to host a Barca v United game
I never really considered that these sort of fixtures. having such an affect. It is always the most subtle things that have such a big impact.
I am also a fan of asian players. I tried to buy Honda in my Fulham game, but CSKA did not want to let him go.
Also, when buying players you can use the percentage of next sale clause. I usually use it in players that I do not have intention to sell in the future. Sometimes, using this clause can make the price drop by 40% – 50%.
About pre-season friendlies, I never gave them too much importance. I just play 4 or 5 games to improve squad harmony.
Ruderic´s last [type] ..Fulham Story- First Season Transfers
I think that can be a risky move in career games, because if it comes about that a player gets upset or distruptive you might want to get rid of him and make a little bit of cash while he is levaing, giving you money to stick into your own bank.
But if you are going to have to share 50% of profits with someone else might just add another sting.
In terms of friendlies, there is alot of useful things you can do with them http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/01/18/friendlies-the-tactical-playground/
They can be nice little money spinners for clubs in the lower league.
Sharing the profits is certainly not the best option, but it can be a good alternative in case you have a tight budget and need 5 or 6 new players.
If you have a good season with those signings, the board will surely give you a bigger budget next season.
Ruderic´s last [type] ..Fulham Story- Excellent Start of Season
The first thing i do to get money to buy players is to sell a couple of my rotation players, usually twice their value, always with a 50% future fee.
Then, let´s say i sold for 40 million, i never buy players with cash, i buy in 48 months payments, so my 40 mill budget i can buy or around 100 considering that i will have to pay for higuer wages and signing fees.
You can get good money organizing friendlies and cups,i did it but had to spend it to rely the pitch which was destroyed by november:)
I also got lots of players injured_=
I am sure then all worth in the end. I don’t think I have ever had to relay a pitch.
The finances do not add up in this game. I took over Northwich, which had debts of 120000. So far i have paid back 450,000 at the end of season 1. 400% interest per year, or just bad programming?
I have a ss of the expenditure total being double the sum of the individual items. The whole thing seems really messed up.
Yeah I am not sure that the finances part of the game is fully sorted.
It is something that has done my head in for a while, FM economics dont fully make sense and you wouldn’t be able to be an Arsene Wenger and save the club millions.
But the tips that I have put in these guides should at least earn some extra money on top or get a little more in the transfer kitty.
How i made millions:
Very time consuming:)
1.organize friendlies everyday available during preseason and season away with Argentinian,brazilian and mexican teams(usually you will get arounf 220k USD per game)
2.Get dozens of players on trial every month and send them to the reserve team
3.Every time you have one of this friendly games, to save time play with the main squad, but ask the AM to select the first 11 from the reserve squad(players on trial), don´t use the main squad as it may mess up oyur team gel.
4.So if in 10 days you play 10(AWAY) games you will earn around 2.2M USD, you can do it with lower teams from league 1, league 2 or championship.
easier way by miles fm editor =D and you can’t really call it cheating, when its editing =D
I read up on quite a few fora and on 1 i saw a pretty good money maker for Lower divisions. In Pre-Season start a Friendly LEAGUE. This is done with 3 other teams, with as high of a reputation as possible from ur given choices (make sure u also try to get the cheapest ones, the cheaper the more profit u get).
AEM
Mariano, what can I say? You are a deviant Dude! I luve it!!!
In my first save of 2011 I´m, managing Havant & Waterlouville, after 2 season we are in league 2.
The best frienflies i found are against New Zealand team 35k american dollars each away match, so if you play 10 you will have 350k and you keep your youngsters and reserve team very fit!
Love this site
Ross Flynn
Hy i bought some interesting youth players but i don’t have room for them to play, i tried to send them on loan but always said :As things stand no team will make a loan offer. why is that the players i am talking about are wickham ,lukaku
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