Questions about becoming a "selling club"

[GenesisBit]

Hey guys. Huge fan of FM and currently playing my Leyton Orient longhaul save in the year 2021. I've won the BPL for the past three years but cannot progress to far in the Champions League unfortunately. **** you PSG!


Anyways, one thing I have noticed for years is that the club didn't exactly make tons of money naturally (only through the lump sum TV rights, trophy wins, etc).


I decided to create a long term strategy of poaching extremely talented 15, 16 year olds, loaning them to a club and then selling them for huge profit. My Under 21s squad is full of potential and has a lot of 5 star quality players. Lots of them out on loan (with wages paid in full my loanee club).


The Summer of 2021 was where I started selling some of my loaned players.


I sold a 19 year old goalkeeper to Atlitico Madrid for €30m (he was on loan the season before and won the title with them).
I sold a 19 year old winger to some club (can't remember, at work now) for €15m who was also on loan season before and won some cup trophy.


I sold a defensive midfield player for €18m to some club, same story as above.


And a few other players sold too (my big, big players have yet to come to that selling phase). I gained around ?120m in transfer funds which looked amazing. I had no player I was interested to buy so I just left it alone (almost paid ?200m over 48th months for some 18 year old monster who looked like the next messi, came to my senses shortly after).



Now with all this money, I've noticed that my club finances are still dropping horribly month over month to the point where it looks like it was all for nothing.
The same thing seems to happen the years I didn't sell players (I'm ending up with the same amount of money in the club regardless of what I do, dipping into the negative values towards the end).
This is not encouraging me to continue this "selling club" style of making money.
Things like non-footballing costs are crippling me and a few high wage players (which may be gone end of season).



Is it possible to make a monthly profit at all? Is it beneficial to become a selling club?

 

[AayushCFC]

You also have to make sure about your club's revenue from stadium. How big is it? I think you're operating in a relatively smaller stadium and might need to build a new one if you want better revenues. That can be the only reason I can think of, I made WBA big boys in PL (Not as big a challenge as yours I know) but I didn't have to sell too many of my players to balance finances. I only sold players when i had a young regen replacement ready, not necessarily selling for money.

 

[GenesisBit]

You also have to make sure about your club's revenue from stadium. How big is it? I think you're operating in a relatively smaller stadium and might need to build a new one if you want better revenues. That can be the only reason I can think of, I made WBA big boys in PL (Not as big a challenge as yours I know) but I didn't have to sell too many of my players to balance finances. I only sold players when i had a young regen replacement ready, not necessarily selling for money.

To by fair my stadium was tiny until recently (and it's still not huge to be fair). It was I think around 15k seats and was upgraded to around 26k seats recently. Not sure how long I have to wait before I am allowed to request another stadium.

I would have preferred the option to just dump the €120m straight into the club finances (and pray I can stay into the positive figures until the end of the season) as I didn't need to purchase any new players thanks to my amazing youth setup but that wasn't an option.

 

[Dynamo_ZahnZee]

They players you're selling, are the lump sums or monthly payments?

If they are cash up front, you're going to make a monthly loss but I wouldn't worry about it.
It's your yearly profit/loss you should be paying attention.

 

[GenesisBit]

They players you're selling, are the lump sums or monthly payments?

If they are cash up front, you're going to make a monthly loss but I wouldn't worry about it.
It's your yearly profit/loss you should be paying attention.

Yeah they were all lump sums.
I actually still have to finish that season so I should actually just compare yearly finances at the end of the season.

One thing is for sure, I completely forgot to take out Nastasics 50% wage increase per year (desperate to sign him before I won any BPL trophy, it was difficult) and his wage have ballooned over the years to 175k.
I can't accept that so I think he may have to be sold which is difficult for me.

 

[Dynamo_ZahnZee]

Yeah they were all lump sums.
I actually still have to finish that season so I should actually just compare yearly finances at the end of the season.

One thing is for sure, I completely forgot to take out Nastasics 50% wage increase per year (desperate to sign him before I won any BPL trophy, it was difficult) and his wage have ballooned over the years to 175k.
I can't accept that so I think he may have to be sold which is difficult for me.

Is that 175k a week? I'd have him on the dole queue faster than I can ring his agent. No player is worth that money


Aye, monthly finances mean nothing to me since it makes sense that most of your income comes in a 2-3 month window (Prize money, season tickets, sponsorships, player spending, ect) meaning you'll be making a loss for most of the season. As long as your combined monthly losses don't exceed your big incomes (season tickets + TV money + Prize money) then you're fine!

 

[GenesisBit]

Yeah 175k a week! I kept forgetting he had the rise in his contract (I managed to get rid of it from almost everyone else).

Even my best striker is only on 60k a week.

That's good to know. From now on I will just look at my yearly profits.

One last thing though, is it still worth it to continue this practice of selling my youth for big profits? Will it be clear to my that a good chunk of my yearly profit was from selling youth?

As I said, I would rather the cash I get from selling goes into the club rather than the transfer funds. With my youth team I have set myself up nicely for the next few years.

 

[AayushCFC]

Is that 175k a week? I'd have him on the dole queue faster than I can ring his agent. No player is worth that money


Aye, monthly finances mean nothing to me since it makes sense that most of your income comes in a 2-3 month window (Prize money, season tickets, sponsorships, player spending, ect) meaning you'll be making a loss for most of the season. As long as your combined monthly losses don't exceed your big incomes (season tickets + TV money + Prize money) then you're fine!

Fernando Torres eats 175k a week.. For about 3 years.. and he's useless, compared to Nastasic who's at least a WC CB. You must be really happy as LFC fan, tho -.-

 

[AayushCFC]

Yeah 175k a week! I kept forgetting he had the rise in his contract (I managed to get rid of it from almost everyone else).

Even my best striker is only on 60k a week.

That's good to know. From now on I will just look at my yearly profits.

One last thing though, is it still worth it to continue this practice of selling my youth for big profits? Will it be clear to my that a good chunk of my yearly profit was from selling youth?

As I said, I would rather the cash I get from selling goes into the club rather than the transfer funds. With my youth team I have set myself up nicely for the next few years.

I only become a selling club for a brief stint when I ask the board to build a new stadium.

 

[CSpin]

A useful way to overcome large wages for new contracts on your time is to pay the player more than he wants so that you can add the optional extension to three years, giving your young starlet a 5-8 year contract.

How much do you make in sponsorships every season?

 

[Sherkey]

A useful way to overcome large wages for new contracts on your time is to pay the player more than he wants so that you can add the optional extension to three years, giving your young starlet a 5-8 year contract.

Not too useful, incase they perform rather well when given a chance in the first team, they'll usually want a higher wage. 2 MotM, and their agent'll start ringing you up, Reject it and player becomes unhappy many times. I usually ask the player to sack the agent, but that has around 60% effect/

 

[Alienman]

By the sounds of it your board is putting 100% of all transfers into your transfer budget so its not really going into the club. I know there is an option to ask the board for a greater percentage of transfer fees received but I don't think there is an opposite. I often wish there was, like when I don't need 20m to spend why can't I just tell the board to pay off our loans or something.

 

[unbreakable212]

By the sounds of it your board is putting 100% of all transfers into your transfer budget so its not really going into the club. I know there is an option to ask the board for a greater percentage of transfer fees received but I don't think there is an opposite. I often wish there was, like when I don't need 20m to spend why can't I just tell the board to pay off our loans or something.

You're right that the money would get added to the transfer kitty, but I think it also goes into the Balance bit aswell, could be wrong. Also in previous versions if you make alot of profit over a season, they sometimes pay off a chunk of a loan all at once, usually at the end/beginning of a season. But you need to be "financially secure" which can be vague for different clubs and different financial situations. I imagine that'd still happen on FM14.

 

[TJD07]

Just throw all the money into wage budget and sit on it.

Being a selling club when you're one that's climbed up the leagues is the best way to get a new stadium built and make sure you don't get crippled by increasing wage demands.

 

[Bobby Baggio]

I take it that money generated from non player sales never goes to the transfer kitty unles you ask the board to increase the budget? Only reason I ask is that I generate a lot of revenue from revenue and gate receipts but it doesn't ever top up my transfer kitty.

 

[Sherkey]

I take it that money generated from non player sales never goes to the transfer kitty unles you ask the board to increase the budget? Only reason I ask is that I generate a lot of revenue from revenue and gate receipts but it doesn't ever top up my transfer kitty.

No, none of it goes into your transfer budget. They go towards the club balance, in helping it stay afloat. And even in transfers, only a percentage of it goes into your transfer budget (You can ask the Board to increase the percentage)

 

[GenesisBit]

Thanks guys, there is a lot of useful information here.
I managed to request a stadium expansion and it will be ready in about a year.

I've also put all my transfer funds to the wage budget side. It's January 1st now and I've noticed I am still labeled as a "rich" club (usually drops to secure from now until end of season before jumping back to rich) so it seems the sale of the players has helped.

I think my transfer budget is being slowly diminished but I can't be sure. It's like the club is taking some of the funds when needed (I think this is a result of it being on the wage side of the slider).