Transfers
As your players get old and retire, or your club outgrows them (or vice versa), you'll probably want to strengthen your team with new recruits.
The marketplace is always active and checking it regularly can improve your odds of finding the right player.
The purchase process is based on hidden auction and you will have to outsmart other managers and bots.
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Number of players.
Your club will prevent you from selling players if that would leave you with less than 23 players in your main squad.
If that still happens somehow (i.e. player retires) - you might get fired. Ideal squad depth is between 28 and 32 players.
Anything else will incur a penalty to your team spirit.
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Salary cap.
Every club has a salary cap that is approved by the board and depends on club's stature and popularity. You can freely buy players as long as you keep total salaries below the cap. You are allowed to go over the cap by up to 20%, but you will pay increasing overdraft fee for doing so. Going into overdraft space a certain amount is quite normal and useful, but it puts pressure to deliver good results on the pitch and earn that money back.
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Scouting.
Normally you only have basic knowledge of players that are not in your team and you will see their skills as a range (i.e. 13-16).
You can scout potential transfer targets to find out their exact skills and traits.
You get 2 scouting actions every day and can accumulate 20 at most.
Hiring a scout will slightly increase the speed at which you regenerate scouting actions.
Your own players are automatically scouted for free.
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Available money.
Your money reduced by your active offers to buy players. You can only buy players if you have enough money and you are under your salary cap (with your active offers taken into account)..
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Available salary cap.
Salary cap is determined by your club's popularity and stature.
You might want to sell players that you're overpaying if you're tight on money or hitting the salary cap.
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Selling players.
Nobody can buy your players until you put them on the transfer list (or their contract expires and they're transfer listed automatically).
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Buying players.
You can only buy players that have been transfer listed. The transfer is resolved via hidden auction - place your offer and the player will pick the best one.
It takes the player up to 48 hours from the time he received the first offer to decide where he wants to go (but usually closer to 24 hours).
Once you make a bid it can't be withdrawn, you can only improve it (i.e. if other clubs bid for your targeted player).
Contract offer
Players are simple creatures, they care only that they get paid enough and that they play football.
When offering a new contract the player will have minimum expectation that you have to satisfy in order for him to even listen to your offer.
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Perceived offer value.
When you offer a contract you will see a perceived value box at the top. This is the number upon which the player will base his decision which club to join.
The changes you make for salary, duration, and contract status will all be reflected in that number.
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Salary.
Player will have minimum expected salary depending on his skills, potential, and experience. It is paid daily no matter if the player plays a game or not.
If the player develops to such level that his current salary isn't satisfactory anymore he will become unhappy and request a new contract. It might be wise to give your promising youngsters a bit higher salary to keep them satisfied longer.
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Duration and signing fee.
You can offer a contract duration of 2, 3, or 4 seasons. Players prefer longer contracts so you will have to pay them higher signing fee if you want to offer them short term contracts. Half of the signing fee goes torwards player's perceived value though, so shorter contracts will allow you to offer a player lower salaries, which might be beneficial to keep your squad below the salary cap.
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Contract status.
There are 5 types of contract statuses you can offer:
- Key is for your top stars. They will expect to play every match they can.
- First team is for your regulars. They will expect to play in cca. 75% of your matches.
- Rotation is for your supporting players. They will expect to play in cca. 50% of your matches.
- Backup is for your supporting players. They will expect to play in 25% of your matches.
- B team is for players that are still developing and are undergoing high training regime.
The player will have a minimum expectation for his status and you can't offer him anything below it. You can, however, offer him a better contract status to improve his chances of signing.
Your players
Once you get a player into your club you will need to take care of his contract from time to time.
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Extending contracts.
You can extend player's contract whenever you want if the player gets enough playtime in your team (he will refuse if he doesn't play enough). The new contract will cancel what was remaining from the old one unless you extend it while there's 14 or fewer days left on the old one. In that case - the new contract is an extension to the old one and will have its duration increased by the remaining days of the old contract.
Signing a new contract will remove unhappiness related to contract status.
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Expiring contracts.
If the contract expires the player will be put on transfer list automatically.
He will also stop training and his skills and form will drop faster than usual (and with them his price as well).
You will still have to pay his salary until he leaves, but you will also get the money from transfer.
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Retirement.
At certain age (after 30) players will decide they'll retire. At that point you can promote them to staff if you want as it is explained here. Promoting a player to staff gives you back half of his value (up to 10M). You can also use an investor option to get the full value (again up to 10M only).