#FM14 Video Blog - Transfers & Contracts (English version)

Hello and welcome to another FM Friday feature blog. This week’s blog is focused on what’s new and improved within transfers and contracts for Football Manager 2014. It’s obviously a key area of a manager’s job and in today’s game the transfer and contract landscape is ever-changing, so it’s an area of FM that we constantly review and adapt to keep it current and true-to-life. Two aspects of the football world that change all of the time are the different ways in which transfers and contract off

ers are put together. There are lots of additional clauses nowadays and clubs seem intent on finding new ways to do business all of the time . To reflect this we’ve added in new transfer clauses such as the ability to temporarily loan a player back to the club you are buying him from or the ability to offer loan players as part of a transfer offer. A major change for FM14 is the new live transfer negotiations, and these take place between clubs in a more conversational manner. You can still make

transfer offers the old school ‘via fax’ way that’s been in both FM and the real world for many years, but we’ve added the option to essentially do the negotiation via the phone to try and come to a quick conclusion. Also, when making transfer bids you will now be able to lock certain conditions to let the receiving club know that there is no room for negotiation in that element of the offer, much like you can do already with player contract negotiations. You can, of course, still have other c

lubs upset your plans after deals are agreed so make sure you get the contract negotiations done just as quickly too, and the player to put pen to paper before other clubs come in with a better offer . In terms of contracts, we’ve added in some clauses that are being requested more often in real life, such as unused substitute bonuses and clean sheet bonuses for defenders. We’ve also made big improvements into the way AI managers and players act in the transfer market with a rewrite of what is k

nown as the ‘shortlist module’ which is what is used by the game to try and mimic the players a real life manager would look for to keep their squad strong over the long term, and with the increased prevalence of player roles both in real life and in FM, the tactics used are also taken into account. It’s not just for transfers though, contract renewals should be more realistic, with clubs considering even more elements when renegotiating. Players are also more likely to enter renewal talks with

AI clubs because of key events such as promotion, good form or transfer offers. This will make for a more competitive gameworld as AI clubs will be faced with the realistic demands that players and their agents make in today’s game. AI has also seen extensive improvements for FM14 in transfer negotiations. You’ll see more negotiations between AI clubs over transfers and more awareness of the impact of future clauses when negotiating deals. Something else we’ve added to reflect real life is the

chance to sign a player immediately if you’ve just agreed a Bosman deal with him and his old club want to get a bit of quick cash. Be aware though, they might want to make him see out his contract, so using this to improve your squad quickly isn’t always a good strategy. Decisions, decisions! The more mercenary players are now also less likely to object to a move to a rival club; as long as that club can offer improved terms and opportunities for success . Information is key to you as a manager

and we’ve made sure that for FM14 you have all of the information you need when dealing with clubs, agents and players. When you start a new job you’ll get more information from your assistant about the current situation with player contracts so you don’t end up losing players whose contracts are expiring soon. There’ll also be greater info to let you know when initial contract demands can be negotiated down so that you don’t get swindled by greedy agents. There’ll be more feedback on reasons fo

r why bids have been rejected, or why players aren’t interested in signing new contracts. In addition, we’ve redesigned key screens, the most obvious being the Transfer Centre, which has been re-designed to become more of a hub for all things transfer related. There has also been some freshening up of both the transfer and contract offer pages to ensure all relevant information is on hand when making negotiations. There have been improvements made across all transfer areas giving further inform

ation and action buttons so you can make changes to the assignments your Director of Football is looking after. Aside from making the game more realistic and giving you more relevant info, we’ve also looked at areas that we felt could be improved upon. Players who have been free agents for a long period will now lower their wage demands demands in order to find first team football, so there will now be fewer players sitting on the free transfer market because they have unrealistic wage demands .

There will also be fewer repetitive bids from clubs if you’ve previously refused a bid of the same or higher value. We’ve also made improvements in areas such as third party player ownerships, player co-ownerships and introduced a new feature that will see certain clubs encouraging external business people to help fund deals in a return for a percentage of ownership of that player Whilst this isn’t allowed in the English leagues, it’s quite common in Eastern Europe, South America and pockets o

f Southern Europe Other nice new features include; more options when offering players to clubs (including multiple player exchanges), more options on preferred positions when sending players out on loan and more realistic player release fees. With all of that and plenty of other smaller improvements to the transfer and contract areas of FM14 we believe the transfer market is the most realistic of any FM yet and of any football game for both short term and long term games. We’re releasing details

of other new FM14 features on a daily basis via the FM Twitter feed .@footballmanager and my own @milessi account. Be sure to follow us to find out more ahead of the game launching on October 31st.