Ackter

Time for my annual dusting off of a few threads. Here's the first one:

There seems to be a bit of work needed on this part of the game. Currently, an AI manager identifies a target, makes an enquirey or a bid, you reject it, they never come back. This is clearly wrong.

Look at Essien at Chelsea - it took them months of negotiating to get him. They put in bid after bid until it got silly. Now, I'm not saying everyone should make silly bids, but each manager knows how much he wants a player*, he should do as much as he can to get his top priorities.

(*do AI managers actually know how much they want a player? or do they simply know they want him? eg. if an AI manager has 5 people on his shortlist, are they treated exactly the same? if so, then this is also a problem. I will go into this at the end of the thread).

Another thing you rarely see in FM is desperate teams coming in at the last minute. Look at Owen and Newcastle. Newcastle desperately needed a striker and Souness desperately needed to save his neck from the chopping block. They saw that Owen was available, with offers of around £9m being talked about. Newcastle and Souness were so damn desperate that they came in with a £16m bid, hoping to price everyone else out of the market - and it worked.

The closest you come to this in FM is when you bid for a player, say £2.5m, and then a bunch of AI teams come in with £6m. Unfortunately, although it appears to be, this isn't what I'm talking about. This just shows that the AI know the 'magic number' for a player. The AI managers seem to know that no less than a £6m bid will be accepted, so they bid £6m. Now while this has been improved in FM08, I feel there's still a lot to be done.

What I want to see is someone (whether you or the AI) making a £6m bid, and then someone else coming in at £10m because they can't afford to lose out on this player.

Now for my proposed system:

We (and the AI) need to be able to set priority to our targets. For example, my shortlist is currently:

Joaquin - medium
Andrea Pirlo - very high
Daniel de Rossi - high
Jermaine Defoe - high
Pablo Aimar - medium
Diego - medium
Rafael van der Vaart - low
Nando Rafael - low
Chris Kirkland - high
Ibrahim Afellay - very low

this shows the players I'm interested, but also how much I feel i need them. When we shortlist a player, we need to be able to specify the priority of capturing that player. We also need to be able to update this at any time.

Now, how would this be used? Using this system (based on their current squad and tactics+) the AI can identify their top targets, and will be more willing to go all-out to try and sign them. If one of your players is on their shortlist, then you can expect to receive several different offers for his services. eg They may come in at £2.5m, which you reject, so they come back at £3.8m, which you think is decent, but want to see if they'll offer more so reject it, they come back with £5m, you decide to try and take them for all you can so you reject it, then the AI decide they can't afford him and tell you so "We have decided to end our interest in Player X at the current time as he is too expensive", at which point we kick ourselves for being greedy buggers. I also believe that most transfer negotiations should start with an enquiry.

(+ example. Ai manager has 4 first team DCs, one of which is clearly a backup player, the others being squad players. From this he would look for a DC to be a key player. After shortlisting several possible DC targets (say, Steven Taylor, John O'Shea and David Weir) they set the one they want most, not necissarily the highest CA/PA, as their top priority (eg Steven Taylor). This means that the AI will do everything he can to get that player before moving on to the next priority target.)

On to the priorities.

Very High - will go all-out to sign
High - will try to sign if possible
Medium - will try to sign for around his current value (default for human managers)
Low - will try to sign at a lesser value
Very Low - will try to sign if he becomes transfer listed or available on a free

Now, we should not be able to see the AI's priorities, and we should only know of their interest if they are listed as medium priority or higher - you're not really going to know if a team has a slight interest in one of your players.

So, how would this effect human managers? - Simple.

This will be your way of telling the Chairman which players you want. If you have a very high priority, and try to sign him, the Chairman is likely to give you more transfer money and a bigger wage structure to try and get him^. (obviously if you're a new manager, he may not trust you and therefor not give you much extra, however if you're a manager he has high hopes for then he could make a lot more available - real life example is when Newcastle went in for Wayne Rooney). Again, if you made everyone on your shortlist a high priority to try and take advantage of this, then your chairman will realise you think he's a mug and will not give you anything extra to spend on him.

(^ with FM2008 we can now adjust our budgets as we see fit, but I still believe this should be linked to the player you're interested in, rather than just a general adjustment.)

If you have a more hands-on chairman then he may take the issue into his own hands. In my case Mike Ashley may see a chance to sign Andrea Pirlo and go for it himself. In this case I'd get a message "Mike Ashley has found that Andrea Pirlo may be available for transfer. He is currently making enquiries". Then, if everything goes well, you'd either get the message "Mike Ashley has agreed a deal with Milan for Andrea Pirlo. He would like you to be present for the contract negotiations" (at which point you'd go to the normal contract negotiation screens) or you'd get the message "Mike Ashley is delighted to announce that he has secured the signature of top target Andrea Pirlo. The player will arrive at the club tomorrow."

I believe this type of system would greatly improve the AI's transfer outlook, and also give the human managers something more to play with.

Any thoughts?

Xennaz

Very well thought out, I think.

I feel that with something like this, it would add greatly to Chairman-induced deals, like how you've explained using the Pirlo example.

Thumbs up from me.

paulsgruff

Very well written and would be a fantastic feature in the game in my opinion.

As an addition to this, I would LOVE for opposition teams to be able to see that a player can actually do the job he would be required for - no matter what his PA is.

To explain (to better understand this, assume that we are at a stage were all players a newgens - mainly because the well known players are pretty well researched and known): I have often done searches in game for a certain type of player based on their attributes and sometimes I can manage to find a player that is priced extremely lowly, even at his peak age (dependant on position of course), but with exactly the set of attributes I want. Due to the way the PA/CA system works, it is very possible to have a player on a relatively low PA/CA, yet be able to have perfect attributes for his position - in the same way that a 199 PA/CA player has bags of ability, but can lack extremely important attribute points in certain areas to do his job as effectively as a lower PA/CA player could.

Now, I have no problems with bidding until I sign this player - and the game engine seems to have no problem in rating this sort of player in a fair way, however if one day I decided to sell him - the AI will often refuse to match the sort of price you are looking for, saying that the deal isn't value for money. Yet they will then go and buy another player that has worse attributes for the position, and for more money - simply because he has a higher PA/CA - totally disregarding how well the player can effectively play his role based on his attributes.

Obviously I am using FM07 as my example as it is impossible to view PA/CA's to produce this kind of statement for FM08 so far, but to me this makes no sense really. However, due to not knowing how FM08 works in this way, my point may not be valid.

Jayleeds3

Technical stuff! would love to see the transfer target priority subject included into the game... That would be cool!

Good work in thinking it up Ackter

jamiebarnes

i would agree and also lobby hard for a revamp of staff

- appoint a head of scouting (who can be asked to co ordinate scouting missions around the globe - like Frank McParland does at LFC)

- apooint (if you chose!) a Head of Youth Development, he if well respected, tell you about a up and coming gem or two and if for example you got Paco.le.Serioul from Barca, he might attract Crosas and Bojan to the club! He would also advise you re schedules for youth training and even suggest an U18 manager

- with a bolstered staff section you can then chose which type of manager you shall be, if you want to spend all day training and tinkering (with a hopefully improved training system!) then you could but if you were a more contenental style manager concerned with match days more then a bolstered staff, with guys appoointed for this very matter could happily do you training for you...although this can be done now they would actually pick the schedules and the like...

jamiebarnes

sorry ^^ that has nothing to do with TP and shortlist, i was thinking it was a transfer policy and a shortlist for other suggestions...woops!! :thdn:

FrazT

Good post Ackter and lots of good points in there which I agree with

One further point that needs working on IMO is when you uncover an unheard of gem and put in a "without publicity " bid and within 10 minutes 6 other teams have also bid. This wouldnt happen IRL and it appeasrs that the moment any human manager highlights any sort of inetrest in a player, this opens the floodgates for the AI managers, who coincidentally always offer the exact same bid as easch otrher.

Bongo-Bongo

Thats a good set of ideas that would only help improve the transfer market in FM.

Something I'd like to see is something currently present in CM, the ability to allow the player to talk to clubs whilst the negotitation process is still ongoing. It can get quite frustrating when you spend a large amount of time negotiating a fee for a player, only to find out that when it finally gets accepted, the player has no interest in joining you. This would give the oppurtunity to decide whether it is worthwhile in proceeding with negotitaions, or if your time would be better spent targeting another player.

Mr Wallin

Yea. Excellent idea (as I have said at earlier postings ). :thup:

Mr Wallin

That is mainly due to him being on your shortlist. I have had great success in bidding for players "secretly", just have to keep them at an inactive shortlist. A bit of a pain but it is due to the strange way SI defines what a shortlist is.

btw this might deserve a separate thread (and Ackters point deserve to not be flooded too).