sarasbluegroove

Not sure if this is a bug so I have put it in here so people can discuss. If its decided its a bug then I can re-post and upload a saved game.
I have managed to get Leeds to the premiership after 3 seasons. Their rep started at 5390 in League 1. A few players were wanting to move to bigger clubs in season 3 in the Championship. Jonathan Douglas was one example, once promotion to the Premiership had been achieved by the Playoffs he happily signed a new contract. All seemed well as he obviously recognised the promotion and I thought Leeds' rep must have been lifted.
However now in pre-season after the game has moved me into the Premiership Leroy Lita is demanding a move to a bigger club and is unhappy that I turned down Bolton's bid. No premiership players will agree to move to me, it doesn't seem that my rep has been lifted to a realistic level for Leeds when they are a premiership team.
Any thoughts?

retired_w0lfpack1

We'd need somebody to do "before and after" shots of reputation to see if that's the problem.

In FM'07, somebody who did that found that winning the Championship provided an extreme burst of reputation - making the team into a mid-to-top-Premiership side overnight - so I'd expect that's been tuned down for '08 .. but I haven't seen a thread discussing it.

retired_junvan

IRL do you think a player would still take the chance to go to Bolton rather than a team that has just been promoted? I would think they would relish the chance to get into a club that has a better chance of staying in the top division no matter what the situation.

And I would think the flipside would be true as well. Would players from established teams want to risk going to a club that could be relegated? Maybe after you establish yourself slightly in the prem by avoiding relegation in the first year then you will have more success and a higher rep?

sarasbluegroove

Good point stokes

I guess I could be blinded by the fact that its Leeds! I would think that the size of the club would mean players would want to come to Leeds if they were back in the top flight. But I could be looking at the situation through a fans eyes!

retired_model2b

Use FMM to see if the clubs rep has increased

sarasbluegroove

Hi

FMM isn't compatible with the beta patched games so thats not an option yet.
I'm going to start a new game see what happens as I had patched a saved game before.

leftfoot

Here’s a few non patched game examples from my current save:-

Q.P.R.
14 July 2007, Rep 4750
2007/2008 Championship finished 2nd
2 Aug 2008, Rep 5500
2008/2009 Premiership finished 20th
1 Aug 2009, Rep 5687

They did get a bump in rep from being promoted in 2007/2008. What’s strange here is upon relegation from the Premiership their reputation actually increased, albeit by a small amount. This might be an attempt by the game to artificially improve the chances of previously relegated Premiership teams gaining promotion back up to the Premiership straight away as often happens in real life.

Reading
14 July 2007, Rep 5900
2007/2008 Premiership finished 18th
2 Aug 2008, Rep 6021
2008/2009 Championship promoted via playoffs
1 Aug 2009, Rep 6604

As with QPR they also got a small increase in rep despite being relegated from the Premiership in 2007/2008.

As with 07 the biggest impact on how your clubs rep changes is where it begins. An illustration of how this can make things difficult it getting an unfancied team into the Premiership and actually staying there is Bristol City:-

2008/2009 21st Championship Rep 4667 on 1 Aug 2009
2009/2010 1st Championship Rep 5460 on 14 Aug 2010
2010/2011 20th Premiership Rep 5556 on 16 May 20011

Teams relegated from the premiership in the previous 2 seasons to Bristol getting promoted were actually more attractive players based on reputation alone. For example Birmingham were relegated in 2007/2008 from the Premiership, proceeding to finish in 9th and 4th in the Championship. At the beginning of Bristol City’s first season in the Premiership Birmingham’s reputation was 6362, almost 900 points higher than Bristol City.

One improvement over 07 is that it appears that getting relegated from the Premiership and going straight back up does not generate reputation boosts significant enough to make you more attractive to players than more established Premiership teams.

In my game as Leeds I did get a reputation boost similar to the above example when promoted to the Premiership but it wasn’t significant enough to make me more attractive to players relative to established Premiership sides. It seems the key factors in ‘wanting to move to big club’ are loyalty, ambition and player reputation relative to the club he plays for. But the main thing I noticed with Leeds is that they start off with a reputation similar to a good Championship side so when you do get promoted to the Championship the change in reputation appears to reflect this i.e. it seems the game looks at your current reputation, assesses that relative to teams in your new division, and then increases accordingly. If this is the case and not just a coincidence, then this is a significant improvement on FM 2007 where reps were increased at a set amount. So :thup: to SI if this is the case.

In my game Leeds rep has changed as follows:-
14 July 2007League 1 5250
2 Aug 2008 Championship5378
1 Aug 2009Premiership6132

Other effects I noted (some of these are based on looking at changes in reputation, and figuring out what might have created those changes so I might be wrong):-
Consortium/Tycoon takeovers increase reputation.
Hiring a manager with a higher reputation than the club increases reputation.
Signing players with higher reputations increases club reputation.
Beating higher reputation opposition increases club reputation.
Moving to a new stadium increases club reputation.
Qualification for Europe increases reputation, bigger increase for Champions League.

leftfoot

One thing I would point out is that the cumulative effect isn't fully calculated until the new season begins. For example if you finish 4th in the premiership you get an immediate boost in reputation, but the fact that you have qualified for the Champions League doesn't appear to have a big impact until the season to season change over. I understand this probably makes for more efficient processing but it still screws you over if you have transfer funds available to go after players, or are trying to sign Bosman players.

For example you are club and start in the Premiership at rep of 6300. You finish fourth and your rep increases to 6550. If you try to sign better quality players who have reputations higher than 6550 then depending on their ambition you might have difficulty signing them. But when the new season begins your rep increases to 6800 improving your ability to attract players.

In the real world a player will be aware of this straight away but in the game world of FM you have to wait until the new season begins for players to be 'aware' of your newly improved reputation courtesy of qualifying for Europe.

retired_taustin

The small increase is probably due to the fact that, since they are in Premier League news, people around the world will actually know who they are. Kind of like in real life, when no one i knew had ever heard of Crystal Palace, but then when they were finally promoted, my friends actually knew which team i supported. Even after relegation, they had put up such a good fight to stay up that people still knew who the team was the following season (plus we still had Andy Johnson). It wasn't until after the team stayed down for a couple seasons that people mysteriously forgot who Palace were

You don't necessarily get a spike in rep just by being promoted in real life...most people will question your team's ability to stay up and think of you as a crap team that happened to get to the EPL for a season. It's after you survive that people will finally start to take you seriously.

leftfoot

That is true in real life but in the game reputation serves one main purpose and that is it gives the game a way to judge whether or not a player might sign for a particular team. It has secondary effects on media predictions, match odds and merchandising income. You are thinking of the game as imitating real life but I don't think the game has advanced to the point where players look at where a club has finished in previous seasons, or being able to judge the quality of a squad in determining where they think a club might finish in any given league. They just compare reputation as it is probably the simplest, most efficient way for the game to do it.

The increases in game are a way for it to be able to reflect how a Premiership club, newly promoted or otherwise, is more likely to be able to attract a player than a Championship team.

If it could be replicated I would say if you take a team in the Premiership sitting in 20th and unlikely to avoid relegation and a Championship side destined for promotion. Then have them bid for the same player, then if the soon to be relegated Premiership side has a higher reputation then the player will probably decide to sign for them. Unfortunately this is one of the flaws in the system as I see it behaves.