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I started a game as Benfica (FM08, 8.0.1) the other day, for the challenge of playing in an unfamiliar league with a club that is never going to be able to attract the worlds best players. Therefore my strategy was always going to be to sign young players (typically Brazilians) and make them great.
In short - first season: disaster - 4th in the league, managed to fluke into the UEFA Cup by winning one of the domestic cups, but otherwise it was poor. Fortunately the board wanted to win the title by the end of season 2 so I had another year. I spent the vast majority of 2008 trying to clear out the average players in my team, and bringing in youngsters.
My team for the 08/09 season looked something like this:
GK - Ochoa - £10m
DL - Guillerme - £4.5m / Leo
DC - Breno - £4m / Edcarlos
DC - David Luiz (c) / Nuno Gomes (promising regen)
DR - Nelson (vc) / Potenza - £2m
ML - Di Maria
MC - Biglia - £3.6m / Petit
MR - Cristian Rodriguez (retrained) / Esteves (next CRonaldo, regen)
AMC - Adu / Lulinha - £2.7m
FC - Stancu - £210k / Nuno Gomes
FC - Vagner Love - £6.75m
I didn't get a huge transfer budget each season (£7m / £10m) but funded most transfers through the sale of players.
I signed Hugo Almeida in January, and won the title and the UEFA Cup this time, mainly due to my much improved squad.
However here's where the problems have begun - almost every single player has had a transfer bid, and all of them are unhappy when I reject bids - is there anything I can do to prevent this?!
Most are new signings with 4+ years left on their contract, a lot of players are now Important First Team / Key Players and their earnings are pretty good for the Portugese League.
I'm half way through the summer, already lost Breno for £13m (Inter), Vagner Love for £17.5m (Valencia), Nelson for £7m (Arsenal) and Stancu for £9m (Barcelona) due to the chairman stating "offers too good to refuse". And although I've successfully knocked back bids on my other players so far, I'm worried I'll end up with 4 or 5 more leaving by the end of August.
To make things worse, the bids are all on structured 24 month deals, so I'm seeing hardly any of the money go to my transfer budget.
I've signed Pazzini for £12m to replace my outgoing strikers, Angulo (some Costa Rican RB) to replace Nelson, and Nemgomashe (sp?) in midfield. And have pretty much no money left!
I can promote Buonotte, Altidore, Ocoro and Nazarith (some decent young signings, only heard of Altidore before though) to my first team, but I'm running out of ideas.
Anyone else played as Benfica or another "big" team in a small league, and had the same issues?
i'm not too sure how well it'll work for you but on previous FM games if teams made offers for my players that i knew would upset th eplayer if i rejected it i just negotiate for a silly price. Providing they haven't got a min release this usually means the bids are withdrawn and player doesn't get unhappy. Probably a flaw with it but thus far its worked fine for me!!
Well that has worked for a few players. The main problem, was with Vagner Love and Breno - probably my 2 best players last season, I had offers around £7-8m for each, which I did negotiate upwards (I asked for £30m each). The problem is some clubs don't withdraw offers, they just come in and offer less a few days later, and my board don't give me any chance to negotiate, they just accept on my behalf.
By my reckoning the club will have about £70m in the bank by the end of the season if I achieve the same as in the last one so I suppose the chairman wants to get rich.
I guess as Benfica I'll always be stuck in a rut as a selling club, until the chairman sells or something.
Thats quite annoying then, having a chairman with no ambition!! just in it for the money. With my Portsmouth team luckily the chairman so far has backed me and not intervened when i've rejected bids.
my only annoyance is the ground at Portsmouth, the smallest in the league i think and a new one is being built but only ready in 2011! how does it take 4 years to build a 36000 stadium!! ha ha
your problem is that you probably spent too much money on first season and so the chairman tries to sell everyone, i play with benfica and the only players the chairman interfered was Modric and to be honest he was playing really bad in my team, sold him for 15M, he never interfered since then. i bought many players in 1st season and sold many, players in: delgado 7 M, belluschi 10 M, Modric 10 M, Palacio 15M and after selling players i still had 20 M left. you should get belluschi because he's awesome and sell Cristian Rodriguez. Miguel Victor will be a decent backup DC. Adu played crap for me but also did many others AMC as VDV. piatti and alejandro gomez are cheap options for you. fabio coentrao is also a decent AML/R as backup if well trained. eduardo from bahia is also a cheap option and very versitle player. watch out for bids on david luiz, i sold him for 30M to barça because he wanted move to bigger club. funny thing is that one year later he had a release clause with 30M and i bidded and he wanted to move to benfica again lol
Benfica - My team; challenges & problems 
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