Transfer Guide

The transfer market is where most managers spend most of their time, and it is the part of FM Worlds with the most rules. This guide covers what a player is worth, what a club will accept, and the traps that cost people transfer windows.

What a player is worth

Value comes from exactly two things: overall rating and age. Form, morale, contract length and reputation do not enter into it.

Rating drives value steeply — each point is worth roughly a fifth more than the last, so the gap between a 78 and an 84 is enormous. Age applies a multiplier on top:

• 18 to 23 — a modest discount that shrinks as he approaches his peak.
• 24 to 29 — full price. This is the plateau.
• 30 and over — about 10% comes off every birthday, down to a floor of a quarter of peak value.

Because value is repriced on a player's actual birthday rather than at the season rollover, a 29-year-old you have been watching becomes materially cheaper the day he turns 30. If you are buying experience, buy it just after a birthday. If you are selling it, sell before one.

Windows, and what they really block

Transfer windows are measured in rounds of your league's season, not calendar dates. There is a summer window covering pre-season and roughly the first eighth of the campaign, and a winter window around the halfway point. Loan windows are slightly wider at both ends.

Three rules follow, and they surprise nearly everyone:

• You can bid at any time. Only the completion of a permanent deal is gated. Agree something out of window and it is postponed until the window opens, not cancelled.
• Loans are strictly window-bound, both when you offer and when the other club accepts.
• Free agents can be signed all year round. This is the standard way to fix a mid-season injury crisis.

Deadline day

The window does not just quietly shut. You get a heads-up a round early, then deadline day itself — about five real hours, compressed if the world runs fast — announced in the feed and by push notification. Clubs that were going to take days to answer are pulled inside the window and answer during it, and deals agreed on the day complete before the bell rather than a day later. When it closes you get a summary: the deals done, the total spend, the biggest move and the busiest club.

Buying from a computer-run club

Most clubs in a world are run by the computer, and they follow rules you can plan against:

• A derisory bid is refused instantly. Anything under about 40% of the player's value bounces back immediately without being considered.
• Real bids take 24 to 72 hours to answer. The exact moment is deliberately unpredictable, so you cannot time the market.
• They accept at roughly 110% of value. That is the number to aim at. Bid it and you will usually get your man; bid value and you usually will not.
• A rejection tells you the price. The refusal quotes roughly 115% of value — that is a real figure, not flavour text.

Note that computer-run clubs never transfer-list anybody. If you want a player from one, you have to go and bid for him. Nothing will be offered to you.

Buying from another manager

Against a human seller the rules are looser and the negotiation is real. Your total package — cash plus any players you offer — must land between 40% and three times the player's value. Inside that band you can offer what you like, and they can accept, reject, or counter.

Counters go both ways, and a seller can name up to two players from your squad that they want instead of cash. A counter has to actually change the deal — you cannot re-send the same offer to apply pressure.

Free agents and youth auctions

Free agents sign instantly — no fee, no offer, no waiting. The only requirement is that you meet the wage they expect; offer less and you are told what the minimum is. They come from expired contracts at the rollover and from players other clubs have released.

Youth auctions are different and easy to miss. When a world is created, free agents aged 21 and under go to a sealed-bid auction lasting two to three days. You bid a fee only — wage and a three-year contract are fixed — and you cannot see what anyone else has bid. You can raise your own bid but never lower it. Highest fee wins; if two bids tie, it goes to whichever club has fewer players of similar or better quality in that position, so a genuine need beats a hoarder.

Loans

Loans have the most restrictions of anything in the market:

• Only inside a loan window.
• Players rated 82 or above cannot be loaned at all. Stars are bought, not borrowed.
• A player already on loan cannot be loaned on, and free agents cannot be loaned.
• Caps. Six loans out and six in per club by default, and never more than three active loans between the same two clubs. Players aged 21 and under do not consume the club caps — but they do count against the three-per-club limit.

The fee sits between about 3% and 25% of the player's value. You can attach an option to buy (between his value and three times it), agree what share of his wages the borrowing club pays, and demand a level of playing time. An obligation to buy after a set number of appearances can only bind a human borrower — computer-run clubs will not accept one.

A loan can only be recalled early if it was agreed as recallable. The borrowing club, though, can always send a player back.

Contracts, expiry and Bosman

Contracts run one to five seasons and tick down one at each rollover. What a player asks for to re-sign is built from his market wage and his current wage, and adjusted up for being young with room to grow, being a key player, or being in his final year — and down for being past 32 or surplus to requirements.

He will never take a pay cut. Every figure is floored at what he currently earns. And a player rated 76 or better will flatly refuse to be offered a prospect or surplus squad role, whatever the money.

Let a contract reach its last season and you are in pre-contract territory. Once the league is past halfway, other clubs can agree a free transfer for the following season directly with the player — and his club has no veto. Several clubs can hold one at once; at the rollover the highest wage wins.

To keep him you must beat the best rival offer on wages. The renewal screen enforces this: an offer at or below the rival wage is rejected outright. Check your final-year players before the halfway point, not after.

Release clauses

A clause can be written into a contract at between 1.2 and 6 times market value, and buys the player a wage discount of up to about 12% in exchange. Meeting a clause is not a bid — there is no offer, no negotiation and no waiting. The money moves, the player moves, and his manager finds out afterwards. Computer-run clubs will meet clauses at human-managed clubs too, though conservatively.

Selling

List a player for sale with an asking price and interest arrives from computer-run clubs about a day later, then at intervals after that. Two things to understand:

• The asking price is a suggestion, and it is capped. An AI bid is roughly your asking price give or take 15%, but hard-limited to about 115% of the player's real value. Listing a €10m player at €80m does not mint money; it just means every bid comes in at the cap.
• You cannot list a player you signed this season. Buying to immediately flip does not work, and newly signed players carry a settling-in period during which they cannot be moved on at all.

Separately, unsolicited approaches arrive for your best player — the one you have not listed — every week or two. Because he is not for sale, these come in at a premium: 110% to 140% of value. That is often the best price you will ever be offered, and it is worth taking seriously rather than reflexively rejecting.

When you sell, you can attach a sell-on clause of up to 40%. It pays out on profit only — the difference between what the next club pays and what they paid you — so a clause on a player who never moves again is worth nothing.

Budgets, wages and the books

Two numbers look like budgets but only one is money:

• Transfer budget is your actual cash balance. Every fee, wage bill, prize payment and gate receipt moves this one number.
• Wage budget is a ceiling, not a pot. Nothing is ever deducted from it. It exists to stop you signing a wage bill you cannot sustain.

Income and costs are settled on league matchdays only. You take a flat TV payment plus commercial income scaled to your squad's value, plus gate receipts at home. Against that you pay a slice of the wage bill and a stadium upkeep charge — and upkeep is charged home and away. Cup and continental matches pay prize money and nothing else: no gate, no wages, no upkeep.

Prize money is substantial and it is where a season is really funded. League placings pay on a steep curve — winning a twenty-club division pays roughly twenty times what finishing last does. Cup runs pay per round with a large bonus for lifting it, and continental football pays more than everything else combined.

The limits worth remembering

• Three signings from any one club per season. A deliberate block on funnelling a squad out of one place.
• Squad caps, where a world sets one, count players aged 22 and over. Under-21s are always exempt.
• Newly signed players are locked for about four weeks of world time — they cannot be sold or listed.
• Worlds can add house rules: a maximum fee, a maximum signing age or rating, or a ban on signing from outside the world. These bind human managers only.

What to do with the players once you have them is the development guide; what it all pays for is in running the club.