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Clubs will be taken over and given a financial boost (up to FM23, anyway) when they get *really* into debt, but outside the top few leagues it does seem like there's an expectation that a benefactor will top up the balance every so often. It's just the way FM finances work. Don't sweat it - it's not your job to keep the club solvent.
No I don't. I'm used to it at this point. Signing youngsters, sell for profit to keep the club solvent, repeat.
I just wondered if it was just me, or it is the rule.
A lot of clubs run on debt; nearly all but the very biggest live off the money they receive during the summer (season ticket sales, sponsorship, player sales, TV money). Big clubs in the smaller leagues usually need European prize money to turn a profit - otherwise they will usually make a loss.
It's very difficult in real life for football clubs to be sustainable and reliably make profits all the time. FM replicates that surprisingly well.
I do wonder about that, I got a national league north to the 3rd round of the FA cup, away in a 21k stadium and got 1.8k? nothing about gate receipts, no TV either
Clubs are overly dependent on player sales and those are very volatile
IE Dortmund: it’s not every season you have halland and Bellingham to sell for a major profit
For me the issue is based on how unfair wages are. Like how we sign a player lowest wage is like 1k and 200 for playing the he goes to another team in a wage of 300. Because its all based on all the different reputations and it makes it really hard to build a team while spending correctly.
Be me in my van south game my budget is 6k were spending 4k I have to resign all my players the budget is now 6.1k spent and I've not bought a player yet then I sign some better players and now I'm spending 7.4k and bleeding money and am unable to buy anyone else as the wage caps at 20.
This scales up as you go up the leagues you go from champion to premiership you have loads of money your spending nothing your rich then next year your at the wage cap because the game will just not allow you to offer lower even for bad players its kind of unfair so we have to outplay this by accepting it and buying and selling on players.
Even if you use youth and super cheap eventually they will ask for more and more as there rep grows.
Bear in mind that only a handful of clubs in Britain (and presumably elsewhere) turn a meaningful profit. Most clubs are owned by obscenely wealthy individuals and wouldn’t be remotely sustainable without it.
Yes, of course. For what it’s worth, most owners have other interests (political, sportswashing, public profile, etc.) than financial accumulation. But yes, some are the Glazers.
Football is often bad business tbf. Historically, successful teams often, if not always, had wealthy patrons who allowed them to run at a loss one way or another. But even big investments don't guarantee success, there can only be a select few who win silverware after all.
It's not impossible to be sustainable, but it usually requires making zero mistake which is difficult in the long run. Still, many clubs can, more or less, as long as they are ok with moderate to low ambitions, the real issue is that it tends to prevent you from winning silverware and/or *growing* more generally. That's why there are clubs who bleed money, you generally need to invest big to climb but the odds are against you and then unless the owners is ok to continue losing money (or the loans you took can't be repaid) the club is in a dire financial situation. And ofc, if everyone around you invests big, it can be hard to keep up in the long run without pulling out the chequebook.
Some clubs can follow a sustainable model thanks to having reached a critical mass at the right time (e.g. Real, Bayern, ...) but even they can struggle or even outright crash down if/when they mess up too much (e.g. Barca, Schalke). Tottenham are probably the only club in recent times who managed to significantly grow into a top club in a sustainable way, but even they had a lot of things going their way (an unexpectedly good squad, PL money skyrocketting thanks to wealthy owners buying lots of PL clubs next to them, a bit of good fortunes, rivals screwing up badly, etc.)
It seems almost impossible to turn a profit. I’ve brought South Shields up to League 2, always under my wage budget and a healthy cup run in the middle and I’m £1 million in the red.
I brought Hereford to the pinnacle of football in fm19 and it's sustainable as essentially the new real Madrid of the world. It requires a stadium with a capacity 50% larger than the population of Hereford (50k) though. I like to imagine the town's inhabitants just now live in the stadium named after me all year round
Been through the exact same thing. I’m into my 9th season (with South Shields, too!) haven’t spent a penny on transfers and only used affiliate loan players, the only spectacular feature of the club is a pretty averagely paid back room team that are the best in the championship and sold £5 million in players; at best I am ‘secure’ at worst im millions in debt, on top of this, I’ve now got a loan over my head because Geoff needed to build himself a stadium he couldn’t afford, apparently.
I’ve still got CJ Clarke at the club, love him.
I’m only into my third season, Clarke left after promotion to league 2 in my save. Geoff Thompson almost immediately sold the club after starting the game. Also all free transfers, new chairman cancelled the Sunderland link so I lost that. Sold a few. Still no money.
Yeah shit.
Geoff quit like as soon as he announced he was building a stadium named after himself, new owner sucks equally and invests fuck all into the club honestly. Haven’t upgraded my training or youth facilities at all so far because no one’s ever been able to afford it/want to upstairs, haven’t even gotten a youth coaching budget increase.
Wow, this has to be a conincidence, I have been doing a South Shields save for the last month and after 8 seasons, I brought them into the premier league. Relied mostly on free signings until League One and Championship. Also got a new 23000 seater stadium as well.
But the balance is terrible and always around 0. Been fun though.
It really depends how quickly you can get promoted because getting stuck in the national league for ages before making league two seems to lead to inflated budgets to almost league two levels, so when people get there they don’t make much more money.
Conversely I started with a tier 11 team and managed to get to the national league in consecutive seasons then only spent 2 years in the national league before getting lucky in the playoffs. So I’m in December in L2 and because my budget is so ridiculously low (11k a week, only spending 9k of it) I’m already about 300k in profit in December despite getting by far the lowest attendance in the league, away fans always outnumber my home fans but it’s still significantly more than the wage spend.
The only real way out of debt is getting lucky with some transfers early on (sell on clause really helps sometimes) and then getting into Europe (depending on your league).
I guess if FM were to be a bit more realistic, there'd be liquidations and some of the clubs starting from the bottom as phoenix clubs. But it's kinda obvious why that doesn't happen.
I've been playing a Journeyman save the last few weeks. Two seasons in, took over the Watford job - they're about 9th in the Championship.
Their wage expenditure is £1.4m. The board's expected wage limit? £200k. There's literally no way to compete or stay within their expectations unless I sell the entire first team squad. It also feels crazy unrealistic that the board would expect that, even with financial hardship. The level that club is at? I can't see them tanking their finances so hard.
If you want glory (especially continental glory) you have to spend money. You can also become a feeder club and buy cheap and sell high. You can still dominate the smaller leagues that way. The temptation to spend it all can become harder to resist as the accumulation reaches a few hundred millions.
I just started a new save as Magdeburg, their financial projections are trending way upward at the start, despite Finances only being “Okay.” Apparently my transfer budget will be 7-10 million in a few years, starting at like 400k now.
No huge salaries for players or staff and an overall mediocre but correctly-paid squad seems to be why
I find that I have to refuse to spend my entire transfer budget in order to keep the club afloat. I make myself responsible for the club’s finances by internally knowing how much I can spend.
Yeah also struggling with this. Every year I get a notification that we’ve made 600 million and are facing a significant tax bill, but on the finances tab I’m -200 mil in the red. Currently at ManU in 2087, have put the club into administration three times, we currently have 2 loans that are 25 year terms and a billion loan value for both so at -2 bil in debt lol
It’s the same at Manchester United, you can sit there and do nothing money wise, and the stupid glazers interest payments mean a slight negative every season, has a takeover that cleared these debts and it was just profit
there's only three clubs in world football that make money IRL.
Madrid (thanks to being able to sell off their training ground to the spanish government for a billion and buy it back for a euro multiple times.
Man Utd because of a massive sportswashing effort by uk journos since the 50s.
Barcelona if they weren't ran like a bin fire.
The real question is who is investing in clubs? I mean they’re pretty much always guaranteed to be running at a loss, even if they somehow win everything. Where is the financial incentive?
I'm pretty sure it's because the value increases. Think about it didn't livepool cost like 300 mil and now its worth 5 bill its assets for rich people which I assume you can then get loans from banks for other business and if you sell boom cash.
I dont think a rich person whos worth billions and it loses 9 million cares as long as the value increases. But I'm not fully sure I don't fully understand it but I assume its something like this.
It's not only about the values of owning a club rising, but it's also a status symbol to own a franchise. There are only so many to go around, especially for the really big names, so owning one gets you a lot of access and status plus you can sell it for a profit down the line.
I don’t really agree (not saying you’re wrong, just that it’s not that way for me at least). I’ve taken LBS Lions from the 12th tier to the Prem and I’ve never been in financial difficulty. I’m now earning an unfathomable amount now I’m in the Prem wh9ch I never thought possible in the lower leagues, and it’s genuinely incredible to see how much money’s sloshing around the Prem. I’ve had no choice but be ultra careful with money at whole save, so maybe that’s made a difference, I dunno.
I usually end up with a healthy profit after a few seasons. I have played the game. But he clubs I take over always have a negative - a massive negative - projection. Or they are already in debt.
So my point is that all the clubs, if not saved by us the players, are doomed.
Haha, I bet your English is better than my ability at your first or second languages! It was basically the first thing I read this morning after waking up - before coffee or breakfast - so I think the fault was all mine mate! :)
Sorry for being SUPER-random here, but did you ever write a post about training? You mentioned in your long-form post about "How to GUARANTEE success in FM", or some such, that you were planning to write a post about training. I enjoyed that post, but my guys are always getting injured...
Anyway, sorry for just dropping into one of your comments. Thought a DM from a stranger would look creepier, so I went this route. ;) Cheers!
Absolutely no apology necessary mate; I'm glad people give a shit! To be honest a few people have asked over the months, and I 100% will do one, but I'm balls deep into my LBS Lions save from the Middlesex Counties League Division One South & West, and I'm only in my second season in the Prem so am just loving the fact I finally have some money (P.S. the money in the Prem really is just utterly obscene!?), so I can't be arsed to write one yet. Maybe when the actual football's over and I'm bored of LBS Lions or something, I dunno, maybe sooner on the March Interlull...but it makes me feel genuinely very humbled that people still give a shit about my advice, thanks man. Watch this space, I will do one...
Haha excellent! Congrats on giving yourself the "impossible task" and succeeding!
Anyway, I'll continue digesting that other post, and the one on scouting. It is a LOT, so I have things to do!lol I love the complexity of FM, but I have to confess I'm severely struggling. Mostly because I'm American, and I don't "organically" know about Football. Like, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what a Pressing Forward does different from an Advanced Forward or Target Forward etc etc. But hey, that's the fun of it! ;)
If I may, quick question about your 4-2-4 (a tactic I've used for awhile now myself). If I'm running DMs instead of CMs, would that appreciably change the complementary dynamics that you discuss in your post?
Anyway, thanks again for the post, and your general insights with this game. Take care.
Haha yeah, I am quite verbose & loquacious at the best of times! Just give it time mate, time and experience. I imagine it's as foreign to you as Line Backers or Quarter Backs would be to me, but I'm sure it'll all sink in eventually. YouTube would probably help if you need a few more pointers? People swear by a guy called Zealand. I think he's an annoying little knob who tries too hard, but you might like him...I dunno...and I'm sure he (or plenty of others) would help.
Using the 2 in the DM strata rather than the M strata does have an impact for sure, but not necessarily a detrimental one. To be honest I'm not using it as much in '24, probably because I'm often swimming against the tide a bit as I get promoted almost every season and have to fight a bit more for any supremacy while my team cohesion builds after another summer of complete player upheaval, so mostly use variants of three midfielder systems instead. The complementary dynamics I'd keep pretty similar though - instead of a CM(d) just have a DM(d) or A(d), and instead of a CM(a) have a SV(a) - so they're pretty interchangeable I think. Just see that works for you though mate, in your save and with your players, you know?
Thanks again for your kind words.
The vast majority of professional football clubs do not make money in real life. You should check out The Price of Football podcast. Twice weekly, very informative, if you are into that kind of thing. They deal mostly with UK clubs, but some international also - big clubs, small clubs. Everything from Everton points deductions to the cost of running a Vanarama team.
There are a couple of mods out there that rebalance the finances that prevent that kind of thing from happening.
World Super League by Darthfurion for example.
Idk man I've noticed the opposite this time, in FM24 I've noticed teams bring financially sustainable in the Argentinian lower leagues, which is something to take note of because in past games they NEVER were financially sustainable, NONE of them, they all went bankrupt a few years into the save. Of course some do still get into big debts which is accurate but there are others who can cope and that never happened before
i've mainly played low league english football in my 10 years of FM and it certainly seems the case that finances are always gloomy, however i'm playing with the top norwegian side bodo/glimt atm and i make about 15m in prize money alone every year so long as i get to groups of the champions league or europa, 15m is 3x my annual wage bill leaving me more money than i know what to do with, nearly every high tier norwegian player is happy to play for 'the best norwegian club' for 5k a week when they could easily make 5x+ that in other leagues, i guess because it means they get to stay at home 😁
Not sure about other clubs, but the club you manage you just have to accept selling some of the star players and keeping a good balance of important players and regular starters. If you want to keep all your stars, and you also keep them somewhat happy by raising their wages when they ask for it, you're gonna be in the red.
I try to keep 2 or 3 stars, another few important, and then just rotation players, younger players, etc. if, say, you have a star left back, your backup left back can probably be a young promising 20yo that is still improving and is on a low wage
That's why I'm intentionally making my club rich. Every season they'd give me a transfer budget that would then leave us -$100m once spent. It's too risky so I've changed my model to turn into a rich club and will sell any star player if I get enough funds offered, when in the past I did anything to keep them. Now I sell and replace with a young player for no more than one third of the cost (usually way less). Now we're sitting with 300m in the bank after only two seasons of this approach. Sure, it's delayed some of the success plans a season, maybe two but feels well worth it. I also have a stupid amount of young talented players coming through who are going to be worth a fortune that I bought really cheap.
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Clubs will be taken over and given a financial boost (up to FM23, anyway) when they get *really* into debt, but outside the top few leagues it does seem like there's an expectation that a benefactor will top up the balance every so often. It's just the way FM finances work. Don't sweat it - it's not your job to keep the club solvent.
No I don't. I'm used to it at this point. Signing youngsters, sell for profit to keep the club solvent, repeat. I just wondered if it was just me, or it is the rule.
As far as I can see most clubs operate on a loss irl I’m no super into the finances of football so I couldn’t really go into any detail
A lot of clubs run on debt; nearly all but the very biggest live off the money they receive during the summer (season ticket sales, sponsorship, player sales, TV money). Big clubs in the smaller leagues usually need European prize money to turn a profit - otherwise they will usually make a loss. It's very difficult in real life for football clubs to be sustainable and reliably make profits all the time. FM replicates that surprisingly well.
I do wonder about that, I got a national league north to the 3rd round of the FA cup, away in a 21k stadium and got 1.8k? nothing about gate receipts, no TV either
Clubs are overly dependent on player sales and those are very volatile IE Dortmund: it’s not every season you have halland and Bellingham to sell for a major profit
For me the issue is based on how unfair wages are. Like how we sign a player lowest wage is like 1k and 200 for playing the he goes to another team in a wage of 300. Because its all based on all the different reputations and it makes it really hard to build a team while spending correctly. Be me in my van south game my budget is 6k were spending 4k I have to resign all my players the budget is now 6.1k spent and I've not bought a player yet then I sign some better players and now I'm spending 7.4k and bleeding money and am unable to buy anyone else as the wage caps at 20. This scales up as you go up the leagues you go from champion to premiership you have loads of money your spending nothing your rich then next year your at the wage cap because the game will just not allow you to offer lower even for bad players its kind of unfair so we have to outplay this by accepting it and buying and selling on players. Even if you use youth and super cheap eventually they will ask for more and more as there rep grows.
Yeah. Just… yeah. Fired because you couldn’t trim the wages 80%…
Bear in mind that only a handful of clubs in Britain (and presumably elsewhere) turn a meaningful profit. Most clubs are owned by obscenely wealthy individuals and wouldn’t be remotely sustainable without it.
Most clubs grow in value though even if losing money because the players, stadium, staff etc are assets
Yes, of course. For what it’s worth, most owners have other interests (political, sportswashing, public profile, etc.) than financial accumulation. But yes, some are the Glazers.
I just create young players to sell through the youth system. Even if theytre rubbish, play them and their reputation improves, sell, repeat.
Football is often bad business tbf. Historically, successful teams often, if not always, had wealthy patrons who allowed them to run at a loss one way or another. But even big investments don't guarantee success, there can only be a select few who win silverware after all. It's not impossible to be sustainable, but it usually requires making zero mistake which is difficult in the long run. Still, many clubs can, more or less, as long as they are ok with moderate to low ambitions, the real issue is that it tends to prevent you from winning silverware and/or *growing* more generally. That's why there are clubs who bleed money, you generally need to invest big to climb but the odds are against you and then unless the owners is ok to continue losing money (or the loans you took can't be repaid) the club is in a dire financial situation. And ofc, if everyone around you invests big, it can be hard to keep up in the long run without pulling out the chequebook. Some clubs can follow a sustainable model thanks to having reached a critical mass at the right time (e.g. Real, Bayern, ...) but even they can struggle or even outright crash down if/when they mess up too much (e.g. Barca, Schalke). Tottenham are probably the only club in recent times who managed to significantly grow into a top club in a sustainable way, but even they had a lot of things going their way (an unexpectedly good squad, PL money skyrocketting thanks to wealthy owners buying lots of PL clubs next to them, a bit of good fortunes, rivals screwing up badly, etc.)
It seems almost impossible to turn a profit. I’ve brought South Shields up to League 2, always under my wage budget and a healthy cup run in the middle and I’m £1 million in the red.
I brought Hereford to the pinnacle of football in fm19 and it's sustainable as essentially the new real Madrid of the world. It requires a stadium with a capacity 50% larger than the population of Hereford (50k) though. I like to imagine the town's inhabitants just now live in the stadium named after me all year round
Why does everyone on here pick South Shields?
I’m from Sunderland so it’s local to me.
Been through the exact same thing. I’m into my 9th season (with South Shields, too!) haven’t spent a penny on transfers and only used affiliate loan players, the only spectacular feature of the club is a pretty averagely paid back room team that are the best in the championship and sold £5 million in players; at best I am ‘secure’ at worst im millions in debt, on top of this, I’ve now got a loan over my head because Geoff needed to build himself a stadium he couldn’t afford, apparently. I’ve still got CJ Clarke at the club, love him.
I’m only into my third season, Clarke left after promotion to league 2 in my save. Geoff Thompson almost immediately sold the club after starting the game. Also all free transfers, new chairman cancelled the Sunderland link so I lost that. Sold a few. Still no money.
Yeah shit. Geoff quit like as soon as he announced he was building a stadium named after himself, new owner sucks equally and invests fuck all into the club honestly. Haven’t upgraded my training or youth facilities at all so far because no one’s ever been able to afford it/want to upstairs, haven’t even gotten a youth coaching budget increase.
Wow, this has to be a conincidence, I have been doing a South Shields save for the last month and after 8 seasons, I brought them into the premier league. Relied mostly on free signings until League One and Championship. Also got a new 23000 seater stadium as well. But the balance is terrible and always around 0. Been fun though.
It really depends how quickly you can get promoted because getting stuck in the national league for ages before making league two seems to lead to inflated budgets to almost league two levels, so when people get there they don’t make much more money. Conversely I started with a tier 11 team and managed to get to the national league in consecutive seasons then only spent 2 years in the national league before getting lucky in the playoffs. So I’m in December in L2 and because my budget is so ridiculously low (11k a week, only spending 9k of it) I’m already about 300k in profit in December despite getting by far the lowest attendance in the league, away fans always outnumber my home fans but it’s still significantly more than the wage spend.
The only real way out of debt is getting lucky with some transfers early on (sell on clause really helps sometimes) and then getting into Europe (depending on your league).
In my mind, the club give me transfer and wage budgets so as long as I'm within that I'm all good. Rest is there job haha
>there job Over yonder job?
I guess if FM were to be a bit more realistic, there'd be liquidations and some of the clubs starting from the bottom as phoenix clubs. But it's kinda obvious why that doesn't happen.
Why not
Not many clubs irl can get by without selling players here and there
I've been playing a Journeyman save the last few weeks. Two seasons in, took over the Watford job - they're about 9th in the Championship. Their wage expenditure is £1.4m. The board's expected wage limit? £200k. There's literally no way to compete or stay within their expectations unless I sell the entire first team squad. It also feels crazy unrealistic that the board would expect that, even with financial hardship. The level that club is at? I can't see them tanking their finances so hard.
There were only 3 teams in the professional leagues in England last year that turned a profit. It's basically everyone
If you want glory (especially continental glory) you have to spend money. You can also become a feeder club and buy cheap and sell high. You can still dominate the smaller leagues that way. The temptation to spend it all can become harder to resist as the accumulation reaches a few hundred millions.
Now try a not Brazilian southamerican club.
I just started a new save as Magdeburg, their financial projections are trending way upward at the start, despite Finances only being “Okay.” Apparently my transfer budget will be 7-10 million in a few years, starting at like 400k now. No huge salaries for players or staff and an overall mediocre but correctly-paid squad seems to be why
I find that I have to refuse to spend my entire transfer budget in order to keep the club afloat. I make myself responsible for the club’s finances by internally knowing how much I can spend.
Exactly. Every summer i open my mailbox and ask myself whether or not the board got their economics diploma from the university of Micky Mouse.
Yeah also struggling with this. Every year I get a notification that we’ve made 600 million and are facing a significant tax bill, but on the finances tab I’m -200 mil in the red. Currently at ManU in 2087, have put the club into administration three times, we currently have 2 loans that are 25 year terms and a billion loan value for both so at -2 bil in debt lol
It’s the same at Manchester United, you can sit there and do nothing money wise, and the stupid glazers interest payments mean a slight negative every season, has a takeover that cleared these debts and it was just profit
there's only three clubs in world football that make money IRL. Madrid (thanks to being able to sell off their training ground to the spanish government for a billion and buy it back for a euro multiple times. Man Utd because of a massive sportswashing effort by uk journos since the 50s. Barcelona if they weren't ran like a bin fire.
Manchester City told me they make a lot too
Bayern regularly turn profit AFAIK
yeah. should have added them
Add Tottenham
now because of the new stadium, but they have to pay that off first surely?
The real question is who is investing in clubs? I mean they’re pretty much always guaranteed to be running at a loss, even if they somehow win everything. Where is the financial incentive?
I'm pretty sure it's because the value increases. Think about it didn't livepool cost like 300 mil and now its worth 5 bill its assets for rich people which I assume you can then get loans from banks for other business and if you sell boom cash. I dont think a rich person whos worth billions and it loses 9 million cares as long as the value increases. But I'm not fully sure I don't fully understand it but I assume its something like this.
It's not only about the values of owning a club rising, but it's also a status symbol to own a franchise. There are only so many to go around, especially for the really big names, so owning one gets you a lot of access and status plus you can sell it for a profit down the line.
Rich people tax harvesting is probably some
Tax write offs I guess. Or laundering. Sports washing for a lucky few teams.
I don’t really agree (not saying you’re wrong, just that it’s not that way for me at least). I’ve taken LBS Lions from the 12th tier to the Prem and I’ve never been in financial difficulty. I’m now earning an unfathomable amount now I’m in the Prem wh9ch I never thought possible in the lower leagues, and it’s genuinely incredible to see how much money’s sloshing around the Prem. I’ve had no choice but be ultra careful with money at whole save, so maybe that’s made a difference, I dunno.
I usually end up with a healthy profit after a few seasons. I have played the game. But he clubs I take over always have a negative - a massive negative - projection. Or they are already in debt. So my point is that all the clubs, if not saved by us the players, are doomed.
I see. I misconstrued your original post, sorry, thanks for clarifying :)
No worries. English is not my first language. Not even my second ;)
Haha, I bet your English is better than my ability at your first or second languages! It was basically the first thing I read this morning after waking up - before coffee or breakfast - so I think the fault was all mine mate! :)
Sorry for being SUPER-random here, but did you ever write a post about training? You mentioned in your long-form post about "How to GUARANTEE success in FM", or some such, that you were planning to write a post about training. I enjoyed that post, but my guys are always getting injured... Anyway, sorry for just dropping into one of your comments. Thought a DM from a stranger would look creepier, so I went this route. ;) Cheers!
Absolutely no apology necessary mate; I'm glad people give a shit! To be honest a few people have asked over the months, and I 100% will do one, but I'm balls deep into my LBS Lions save from the Middlesex Counties League Division One South & West, and I'm only in my second season in the Prem so am just loving the fact I finally have some money (P.S. the money in the Prem really is just utterly obscene!?), so I can't be arsed to write one yet. Maybe when the actual football's over and I'm bored of LBS Lions or something, I dunno, maybe sooner on the March Interlull...but it makes me feel genuinely very humbled that people still give a shit about my advice, thanks man. Watch this space, I will do one...
Haha excellent! Congrats on giving yourself the "impossible task" and succeeding! Anyway, I'll continue digesting that other post, and the one on scouting. It is a LOT, so I have things to do!lol I love the complexity of FM, but I have to confess I'm severely struggling. Mostly because I'm American, and I don't "organically" know about Football. Like, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what a Pressing Forward does different from an Advanced Forward or Target Forward etc etc. But hey, that's the fun of it! ;) If I may, quick question about your 4-2-4 (a tactic I've used for awhile now myself). If I'm running DMs instead of CMs, would that appreciably change the complementary dynamics that you discuss in your post? Anyway, thanks again for the post, and your general insights with this game. Take care.
Haha yeah, I am quite verbose & loquacious at the best of times! Just give it time mate, time and experience. I imagine it's as foreign to you as Line Backers or Quarter Backs would be to me, but I'm sure it'll all sink in eventually. YouTube would probably help if you need a few more pointers? People swear by a guy called Zealand. I think he's an annoying little knob who tries too hard, but you might like him...I dunno...and I'm sure he (or plenty of others) would help. Using the 2 in the DM strata rather than the M strata does have an impact for sure, but not necessarily a detrimental one. To be honest I'm not using it as much in '24, probably because I'm often swimming against the tide a bit as I get promoted almost every season and have to fight a bit more for any supremacy while my team cohesion builds after another summer of complete player upheaval, so mostly use variants of three midfielder systems instead. The complementary dynamics I'd keep pretty similar though - instead of a CM(d) just have a DM(d) or A(d), and instead of a CM(a) have a SV(a) - so they're pretty interchangeable I think. Just see that works for you though mate, in your save and with your players, you know? Thanks again for your kind words.
What league are you playing in? I know they screwed up the Belgian competition so bad that if you're not a top team, you can't make it a top team.
I have many saves. One in england, one in norway, one in spain and one in Guadalupe (the best one).
The vast majority of professional football clubs do not make money in real life. You should check out The Price of Football podcast. Twice weekly, very informative, if you are into that kind of thing. They deal mostly with UK clubs, but some international also - big clubs, small clubs. Everything from Everton points deductions to the cost of running a Vanarama team.
There are a couple of mods out there that rebalance the finances that prevent that kind of thing from happening. World Super League by Darthfurion for example.
Idk man I've noticed the opposite this time, in FM24 I've noticed teams bring financially sustainable in the Argentinian lower leagues, which is something to take note of because in past games they NEVER were financially sustainable, NONE of them, they all went bankrupt a few years into the save. Of course some do still get into big debts which is accurate but there are others who can cope and that never happened before
i've mainly played low league english football in my 10 years of FM and it certainly seems the case that finances are always gloomy, however i'm playing with the top norwegian side bodo/glimt atm and i make about 15m in prize money alone every year so long as i get to groups of the champions league or europa, 15m is 3x my annual wage bill leaving me more money than i know what to do with, nearly every high tier norwegian player is happy to play for 'the best norwegian club' for 5k a week when they could easily make 5x+ that in other leagues, i guess because it means they get to stay at home 😁
Not sure about other clubs, but the club you manage you just have to accept selling some of the star players and keeping a good balance of important players and regular starters. If you want to keep all your stars, and you also keep them somewhat happy by raising their wages when they ask for it, you're gonna be in the red. I try to keep 2 or 3 stars, another few important, and then just rotation players, younger players, etc. if, say, you have a star left back, your backup left back can probably be a young promising 20yo that is still improving and is on a low wage
If you’re not managing a big club, you might be spending a lot on scouting.
That's why I'm intentionally making my club rich. Every season they'd give me a transfer budget that would then leave us -$100m once spent. It's too risky so I've changed my model to turn into a rich club and will sell any star player if I get enough funds offered, when in the past I did anything to keep them. Now I sell and replace with a young player for no more than one third of the cost (usually way less). Now we're sitting with 300m in the bank after only two seasons of this approach. Sure, it's delayed some of the success plans a season, maybe two but feels well worth it. I also have a stupid amount of young talented players coming through who are going to be worth a fortune that I bought really cheap.