Football Manager Mad.    



Hints & Tips

Here we will provide you with general hints and tips to help you through your Football Manager career. This page will continue to be updated with new hints and tips, if you have any useful hints and tips to be added to this page please visit the Contact Us page.


Arranging Friendlies - As soon as each season comes to an end you need to start arranging friendly matches for the off-season. These are a great way of boosting the finances. Always arrange friendlies to be played at your home ground to maximise your income from the match.

Arrange friendlies with the highest profile teams that will accept your invitation, start with higher teams first and then work your way down the leagues until someone accepts your offer. The higher profile the team, the more money you will earn in fees.

Arrange frindlies as soon as you are able to in the arrange friendly screen, you want to book the big teams before their schedule becomes too busy.

Arrange as many friendlies as possible. I usually arrange a match every third day during the off-season to maximise my income, don't worry about the results of these matches as they are just to generate income and you can use the temporary players and under 18's if your main players are too tired due to the small amount of time between matches.

Make sure your last 2 or 3 friendlies before the new season starts are against very small teams that you can easily beat, this will help to boost your teams morale back up and get them back into a winning stride. Also leave at least 7 days free before the new season to allow your players to recover.


Selling Players Each Transfer Window - In the January and Summer transfer windows I recommend off-loading players that are half decent and not shining in your team and replacing them with better free transfer players. This means that you will earn money from transfer fees and replace your lost players with better free transfer ones. The income you receive may also mean you can increase your wage budget in the board room request screen and thus sign better quality players. This is a vital tactic to help you move quickly up the leagues.

Even if you have a player who performs very well for you but you've found a better one on free transfer or for a bargain transfer fee, sell your player while you can get some money for them. (I always try selling at an inflated asking price first and reduce it gradually until clubs start to show interest, this maximises the transfer fee you will receive)

Using this method, by the time I have reached Npower League 1 I can be earning around £2million in transfer fees per season and £10-20million in the Npower Championship.

Remember if you sign a player in the summer and he's not the star player you hoped, sell him on in the January transfer window. You will free up wages, earn a nice transfer fee and if nothing else hopefully you will at least get back enough to cover the wages you've paid him so far.

Increasing Your Transfer Funds - It is always frustrating when you just don't have the funds you need to build your squad to achieve back to back promotions or to win the league etc. The board won't budge and give you extra funds, so here's what to do:

Every time you make an offer to a club for a player,
spread all of the payment over 48 months. Once you sign the player, you'll notice that your transfer budget goes down much less than usual. You have in effect taken out an interest free loan over 48 months and because you have higher expectations than the board and hope to get back to back promotions this will mean you have the funds to do it.

The financial rewards of your faster success in the game will help pay back these 'loans' and the board will inject money if your finances start to struggle, basically you are forcing there arm to help you achieve your goals. Your success in the game will ensure the board stays happy with you too!

This tactic has served me well and enabled me to get
back to back promotions straight to the premier league & then finish top half in the premier league.

This tactic is especially good when you get to the higher leagues as it means you also have the funds to sign the best young talent.

Any players that you sign this way that don't make the grade will more than likely have increased in value so you can sell them for a profit &
inflate your transfer budget further.

Player Bonuses - Always set league and cup bonuses to high, this will make your players happy and give them the morale to achieve higher standards in the league and cup competitions.



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