How To Be Your Own Sugar Daddy

It hasn't been this easy to print your own money since the £150M bug was squashed. If you have a decent (but not great) budget, it's easy to wheel and deal your way into the big money. Here's how.

 

Disclaimer

 

First the disclaimer: Mileage may vary. It probably won't work in the lower leagues (see the scale section). But it's worked for me.

 

Theory

 

First, you need to sign the player you are going to sell. You should be looking for players in one of the following two categories:

 

1. Promising young players with a high potential star rating from clubs that are smaller than yours. After you buy them, their value should have gone up.
2. Free agents with a high value, regardless of their actual attributes.

 

Next, try them. If they're great, keep them rather than trying to turn a profit. This isn't Monopoly!

 

However, if they are anything less than great, sell them as soon as you can. Don't wait too long or their value will drop and you'll lose money.

 

To sell them: Don't transfer list them, just offer them to clubs. Some people suggest offering them at around double their list value. If you can get this, feel free to take it, but I've found that triggering an auction is often better. To trigger an auction, offer the player out at a price lower than list value. I start at close to list value and keep lowering it until an auction is triggered. If only one club makes an offer, reject it and offer the player out again at a lower value. 

 

Once you trigger an auction, keep raising the price by about £1M to £2M each round (you may need to experiment with this yourself). If you raise it too much, they'll lose interest.

 

If all other parties drop out and there is only one left, keep raising the price each round, as long as their status is Active. I've raised a player's transfer price by £10M (in small increments) after all other clubs had quit. They were happy to keep increasing their bid each round. Keep going until they indicate it is their final bid. Sometimes they may decide not to keep bidding and you'll have to start again, but it's often possible to drive the price up.

 

Now, rinse and repeat. Don't do that with just one player. Do it with ten. 

 

Examples

 

Here's an eg of a player in the first category:

 

I bought him for £5.25M from Derby:

 

Because they are smaller than Celtic (sorry Derby fans!), he was undervalued and his value went up to around £9M as soon as I bought him. I tried him for half a year, but his neither his results nor his potential was as good as my other options, so I sold him. I couldn't get double his price, so I offered him at around £5M, which was enough to trigger an auction:

 

Newcastle dropped out at £14M, but I went another 5 rounds with Leicester and eventually got them up to £23.5M before they said it was their final offer. That's more than 2.5 times his list price and 4.5 times what I bought him for 6 months earlier!

 

Here's an eg of a player in the second category:

 

I scouted him out and signed him on a Bosman 6 months before his contract expired. I don't have a screenshot of his attributes anymore. They were pretty good, but not quite as good as my current keeper. I signed him anyway, even though I didn't really need him, because he had a high value at A.C. Milan and a bunch of caps for Italy. He was someone with a good reputation, meaning there's a better chance of selling him later if he didn't work out. 

 

As it happens, I sold him via auction almost immediately. Real Madrid were the winners, paying me £38M less than a month after he arrived:

 

Scale

 

I hear you ask: It works for Celtic, but will it work for my club? 

 

I haven't tested it, but I would expect buying and selling promising players from clubs smaller than yours would be scalable. The key is to buy someone who will increase in value as soon as you buy them and to then trigger an auction to drive the price up higher. It's all relative. It should be possible at a lower level than Celtic, but it probably won't scale down to the Conference. I'd be interested to hear from others on their experience with this.

 

Buying and selling free agents will likely be much harder to scale and will probably only work for players with a high reputation. There is a much higher chance you will get caught with the player if you try this with players who aren't top notch and lower level clubs are unlikely to be able to sign these players in the first place.

 

It's also worth noting that the egs above are from season 9 of my career. I started at Celtic with a transfer budget of £2.3M and a maximum wage of £29K. I had to slowly build up to being able to sign better players and to be able to spend £180K per week on free agents, but these principles worked on a smaller scale at the start too. 

 

Anyway, please post with your experiences below.

 

Dangers

 

The biggest danger is that you will get stuck with players you don't really want. This can cause problems if their salary is too high or if they are upset about not playing, etc. If you try this technique a lot, you will experience this at some point. Most of the time however, the worst case is that the player is sold on at a loss. I've found that on balance, if you are careful with the players you pick, there is a very good chance you'll make a lot of money for your club. 

 

The other danger is that to make a lot of money at this, you need to sign quite a few players each year. This can upset team harmony and balance etc. I haven't had any problem with this, but I'm winning lots which makes it much easier to keep everyone happy. 

 

Finally, you may find yourself spending all your time finding players to sell, which isn't exactly the point of the game. Don't forget there are matches to be played too! Still it will all be worth it when you drop £150M on bringing Coman to your club.

[Meow]

Great guide! I also have stuff I could add, but I'll wait till I get to the comp.

Meanwhile my self-sugar daddy exploits, earning 700m in a window, hit the display limit in 4 years and swindling money from clubs using bosmans.

[Scratch]

Thanks @Meow! 2.14B in total? 700M in a window? Wow, seems I'm only a beginner!

So you made your fortune mostly with bosmans? Did you find it only works with the top players? Or could you make money with more average players too?

Edited January 6, 2017 by scratch99

[Meow]

@scratch99 A good chunk of it was from dismantling the current Liverpool squad (which does hurt me because I love the team).

Milner + Lallana = 25m + 27m = 52m

Manuel Locatelli + Maia + Ruben Neves = 16m + 12.75m + 24.5m = 53.25m

Purchase covered. Complete reform. I did sell Maia for 19m because can't retrain him (Thanks SI...) and bought Lewis Cook for 10.5m, who I then sold to Arsenal for 62m 2 years later. Now replaced by a regen that appeared in my club (aka free)

Edited January 6, 2017 by Meow

[Scratch]

@Meow Oh of course! I always do that too (although can't get that much for the original Celtic squad). 

[Meow]

Now for my "guide"

For me it's important to check on January the expiring contracts and at the start of each season the released youth players. These are  literally bargains waiting for you to tell for 12m.

For me, it's always strange how people seems so desperate to sell players and I disagree that they should be offered out at lower prices to trigger biddings wars. The more desperate you seem to sell the players, the lower value you would get. I got an offer for Jonathan Tah by Real Madrid and Barcelona which I negotiated to 147m for Barcelona. I accepted and sold (buying Lucas from Atletico Madrid for 26m to replace him). I kept a backup and tested, rejected the offer from Barcelona and offered him out instead. Highest I could get was a 70+ish bid from Chelsea. Moral of story? Spontaneous offers are better than offering out.

When looking at bidding wars, take note of which clubs are bidding. You aren't likely going to get much more out of a bidding war between Real Madrid and West Ham compared to PSG and City. Also before renegotiating, check out the bidding clubs. I've had Stoke outbidding Leicester (who seem pretty rich this year) because they just sold Xherdan Shaqiri. I've had Sporting outbid PSG in the same way because Real Madrid literally raided them. Moral of story? Check the recent transfer of bidding clubs, you can more than likely siphon most of their excess money off them for players not worth that much.

A further look of bidding wars. Say it's between 2 clubs and 1 just gave the final offer. Offer higher than that and wait for the other club to come in again. If they offer more than required, that is the final offer even if it's "Active". The logical reasoning behind this is that they are simply bidding on a pretense of competition, so once the other club is no longer offering they aren't going to entertain your negotiations anymore. Accept it.

 

P.s. I edited my previous post after you replied, so read that because the idea was not simply dismantling the current squad but also to buy replacements for less with the ability to profit.

Edited January 6, 2017 by Meow

[Meow]

28 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

@Meow Oh of course! I always do that too (although can't get that much for the original Celtic squad). 

Oh don't give me that. It works on all scales. 40m for Cracovia.

Also technically 2.167B for Liverpool, display cuts of at 2.14B unfortunately

Edited January 6, 2017 by Meow

[Scratch]

27 minutes ago, Meow said:

Oh don't give me that. It works on all scales. 40m for Cracovia.

Yeah, I can make good money *for Scotland* by selling off the Celtic squad, but players there are undervalued compared to say Liverpool. A player who's worth 15M in the Liverpool squad will only be worth 6M in the Celtic squad (at the start of the game), because the reputation of the club and the league is part of their valuation.

So while I may be able to sell a player at 2 to 3 times his worth, his starting worth will be lower and he'll go for less when I sell him than if I'd been at a bigger club. No worries, I can make good money for the size of my club and then reinvest it and grow from there.   

Even now, having won the Champions League a couple of times (therefore improving the club reputation), a player worth 55M (list price, not buying price) at Real Madrid will be only be worth 25M once I've bought him... That's why I need to buy from smaller clubs and sell to bigger clubs. Then I get the bump in his price due to him joining a better club (mine). 

 

[Scratch]

Thanks for your guide. Some great advice in there! I hadn't thought to check out the transfer history of clubs involved to see who's cashed up! Will be doing that from now on.

1 hour ago, Meow said:

For me, it's always strange how people seems so desperate to sell players and I disagree that they should be offered out at lower prices to trigger biddings wars. The more desperate you seem to sell the players, the lower value you would get. I got an offer for Jonathan Tah by Real Madrid and Barcelona which I negotiated to 147m for Barcelona. I accepted and sold (buying Lucas from Atletico Madrid for 26m to replace him). I kept a backup and tested, rejected the offer from Barcelona and offered him out instead. Highest I could get was a 70+ish bid from Chelsea. Moral of story? Spontaneous offers are better than offering out.

I guess it depends on the player. If it's Jonathan Tah, you'll get spontaneous bids because everyone wants him. But no-one out there is placing spontaneous bids on Micky Moncur!  So I have to go with triggering an auction. 

1 hour ago, Meow said:

A further look of bidding wars. Say it's between 2 clubs and 1 just gave the final offer. Offer higher than that and wait for the other club to come in again. If they offer more than required, that is the final offer even if it's "Active". The logical reasoning behind this is that they are simply bidding on a pretense of competition, so once the other club is no longer offering they aren't going to entertain your negotiations anymore. Accept it.

So if they offer more than required, then that's it? They won't entertain any more negotiation (if the other clubs are out)? I hadn't noticed that, but I'll keep an eye on it (I probably just missed it).

The pattern I've seen most often is where they match what you've asked for and then you can raise it again (in most cases, sometime they drop out) and keep going up until they put Final Offer on it. For example, with the Moncur example above, Newcastle dropped out when I went from 14M to 16M, but Leicester were still active. I went to 18M, 20M, 22M, 24M and each time Leicester matched it and stayed active. But when I got to 24M, they'd had enough and made a Final Offer of 23.5M.

I'll admit I wasn't paying super close attention until recently and when I wrote this, it was mainly based on some recent egs that were fresh in my mind.

Anyway, thanks for making this guide more valuable!!

[Meow]

58 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

Yeah, I can make good money *for Scotland* by selling off the Celtic squad, but players there are undervalued compared to say Liverpool. A player who's worth 15M in the Liverpool squad will only be worth 6M in the Celtic squad (at the start of the game), because the reputation of the club and the league is part of their valuation.

So while I may be able to sell a player at 2 to 3 times his worth, his starting worth will be lower and he'll go for less when I sell him than if I'd been at a bigger club. No worries, I can make good money for the size of my club and then reinvest it and grow from there.   

Even now, having won the Champions League a couple of times (therefore improving the club reputation), a player worth 55M (list price, not buying price) at Real Madrid will be only be worth 25M once I've bought him... That's why I need to buy from smaller clubs and sell to bigger clubs. Then I get the bump in his price due to him joining a better club (mine). 

 

I'm not trying to downplay what you've done, I'm just saying that selling for multiple times a players works at any level. I do understand players are valued more at Liverpool, but I've sold Erik Jendrisek from Cracovia to Shandong for 4.6m when he's worth less than 300k. However I do have to say, if anything, selling multiple times someone's value works better scaled down to lower levels. Even though the price divisions at higher values is more than at lower values, it is much more relative to the clubs at that level. That said, Cracovia by all definitions are smaller than Celtic.

An example of the divisions at smaller values still too large for small clubs, 1.3m from a Vanarama national club.

38 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

I guess it depends on the player. If it's Jonathan Tah, you'll get spontaneous bids because everyone wants him. But no-one out there is placing spontaneous bids on Micky Moncur!  So I have to go with triggering an auction.

That is true, not everyone will be bidded on. But if you do have a player upset (for me it's usually triggered by selling of star players), maybe don't offer just wait. Sometime it's also better to not trigger an auction, because 25% sell-on. Like I said, if you are triggering an auction between Real Madrid and West Ham, it wouldn't make Madrid pay more and you lose 25%.

38 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

So if they offer more than required, then that's it? They won't entertain any more negotiation (if the other clubs are out)? I hadn't noticed that, but I'll keep an eye on it (I probably just missed it).

The pattern I've seen most often is where they match what you've asked for and then you can raise it again (in most cases, sometime they drop out) and keep going up until they put Final Offer on it. For example, with the Moncur example above, Newcastle dropped out when I went from 14M to 16M, but Leicester were still active. I went to 18M, 20M, 22M, 24M and each time Leicester matched it and stayed active. But when I got to 24M, they'd had enough and made a Final Offer of 23.5M.

I'll admit I wasn't paying super close attention until recently and when I wrote this, it was mainly based on some recent egs that were fresh in my mind.

Yup if they match, you are safe to renegotiate, they likely were going to go up to that price regardless of the competition. I'm not sure how the game is programmed, but I imagine that Leicester were thinking 23.5m anyways.

An example of my pattern is, PSG and City were bidding for Emil Stefanov (I think Berbatov regen). I negotiate till they were both 66m, with City on final offer. I asked for 67m, PSG offered 71m. I accepted and sold. But a testing on a backup save, if I had went straight up to 71m on the first negotiation, no offers. I imagine they don't feel the threat of the 66m City offer to go that high. But if I asked for 72m after they offered 71m, rejected. 72m before they offered 71m, also rejected. But it's technically still "Active"

Edited January 6, 2017 by Meow

[Meow]

40 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

Anyway, thanks for making this guide more valuable!!

No problem man, I consider myself the most transfer profit happy player in FMM (unless someone here would like to challenge me on that)

[Meestercat]

Can I just say that Micky Moncur is the best 1970s footballer name ever.

[xHadex]

yep. i am pro at this. develop your player and then sell.. 

[BatiGoal]

@scratch99 @Meow

Thanks for taking the time to share those tips. Altho I hardly indulge in the 'profit-making' aspect of the game I'm positive a lot of people here will find it useful.

[Scratch]

3 hours ago, Meow said:

I'm not trying to downplay what you've done, I'm just saying that selling for multiple times a players works at any level. I do understand players are valued more at Liverpool, but I've sold Erik Jendrisek from Cracovia to Shandong for 4.6m when he's worth less than 300k. However I do have to say, if anything, selling multiple times someone's value works better scaled down to lower levels. Even though the price divisions at higher values is more than at lower values, it is much more relative to the clubs at that level. That said, Cracovia by all definitions are smaller than Celtic.

I didn't take it as you trying to downplay things. I was just trying to say that selling off the Celtic squad wasn't going to get me enough to buy Coman and friends by itself (but I probably didn't make that clear). I think we're on pretty much the same page with this.

3 hours ago, Meow said:

No problem man, I consider myself the most transfer profit happy player in FMM (unless someone here would like to challenge me on that)

Hehe, no challenge from me!

1 hour ago, Meestercat said:

Can I just say that Micky Moncur is the best 1970s footballer name ever.

Shh... That's the real reason I bought him!  

[Scratch]

21 minutes ago, BatiGoal said:

@scratch99 @Meow

Thanks for taking the time to share those tips. Altho I hardly indulge in the 'profit-making' aspect of the game I'm positive a lot of people here will find it useful.

@BatiGoal For me it's been an essential part of building my squad to support Armstrong in his 1KC attempt. There's no way I could have got 81 goals in a season with the sort of player Celtic normally attract and their normal budget. They just aren't big enough to get the top names, but eventually I've gotten to the point I can buy pretty much anyone. 

[BatiGoal]

7 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

@BatiGoal For me it's been an essential part of building my squad to support Armstrong in his 1KC attempt. There's no way I could have got 81 goals in a season with the sort of player Celtic normally attract and their normal budget. They just aren't big enough to get the top names, but eventually I've gotten to the point I can buy pretty much anyone. 

No doubt it enhanced your chances to reach the 1K. Clever dealings, mate.

[Jack]

Thanks for the guide, I don't offer players out half as much as I should. Lesson learnt!

[Fozz_Quaker]

In the Lower Leagues, would putting greyed out rerserves on a contract do much to help make money, there probably only worth two or three grand a piece, selling 10-20 of those guys could rake in over 50 grand and that is money teams like Darlington could do with