Wages and Contracts

Your players, being professionals, have to be paid a wage each and every session. Every player in your squad has a contract, which is made up of a set wage per session and a number of weeks left on his current contract at that rate of pay. This money is basically a fixed outgoing, and as far as your finances are concerned, is a lost amount already. Whether you keep a player on your books, or sell him to a nonleague side, this money still has to be paid. The only time a contract is not paid up in full is when the player is sold on to another league club. They will than take the amount into account when negotiating his new contract. These two figures are called Current Wage and Contract Length within the game itself.

When a player’s Contract Length falls below 5 sessions you will be given the chance to re-negotiate a new contract with that player. This does not have to be the same rate of pay or period of employment as he was one before, and most likely won’t be, but his current agreement will have some bearing on what he is likely to accept.

If he is currently one of your most highly paid players, you are unlikely to see him accept a drastic pay cut, but conversely, a player on a very low wage is quite capable of saying yes to a pay rise, even if it doesn’t bring him in line with what might be seen as a fair deal. In the space provided on the turn sheet you must tell us the wage per session (in thousands) and the duration of the contract (in sessions) you wish to offer the player.

Please note that you are limited to ONLY the space on the turn sheet for negotiating contracts; if you have to deal with more than nine players in a single week then you just won’t have the time to negotiate effectively - the first nine negotiations will be the only ones that are taken account of, the rest will be delegated to your less-able underlings.

This is a part of the game that takes some getting used to, and only through experience will you be able to judge what offers are likely to succeed, and which ones will be thrown back in your face. To give you some idea of the amount to offer your players, use the following instructions:-

The starting point for judging your offer will be referred to as the Basic Wage (BW) and can be worked out from the following formula;

Basic Wage = Performance Level * Positional Rate * Star Bonus

The Positional Rate is shown in the table below.

The Star Bonus is 1.5 if the player is a STAR, a qualified SBY, or a FUT, otherwise this is simply 1.

So, the Basic Wage for an AGE 20 level 4 UT would be…

4 x 1.5 x 1 = 6.

This is the starting point for considering your offer to the player.

There are other factors which will affect the rate of pay a player expects, some of which are obvious, some of which might not be so clear.

For example, everyone can see that the basic wage for a 1st and 4th Division player of the same age and skill will be the same, but do you think that they are likely to be paid the same? As a rule, you can offer something a little lower for a 4th Division player, slightly less for a 3rd Division man, about basic for someone in Division Two, and probably somewhat higher for the real top-notch players in the 1st Division.

Another thing to take into account is the player’s category, as the benefits offered by P/S players have to be paid for too; P/S players are expensive.

The length of contract you offer a player will also have a strong bearing on whether or not he accepts your offer. Younger players tend to dislike being tied down for a good part of their playing career, and might only accept a contract if it allows them to renegotiate after about a half a season or so. The older players will be looking for security, and are far more likely to accept longer contracts - perhaps as long as two or three seasons - but the question is whether you can afford to hold on to them for that long.

Remember, once a contract is agreed, then a player is legally entitled to receive that amount of money. If you sell someone off to the non-league, then you still have to pay him what you owe him, sometimes resulting in a financial loss! If you decide to forestall offering a player a new contract when he asks for one, perhaps waiting a week or two to see if you can find a replacement for him, then you can offer a null-contract for that session. To do this you MUST enter a contract for him, but make it a bid of Zero K for Zero weeks. This basically tells us that you are putting this player on hold for a while, dealing with him later when you are more sure of your offer. His contract length will still reduce by one week, but no new offers will be made (please note that you cannot offer a player a certain wage of zero weeks, or offer zero K for a number of weeks; it should be obvious, but players do try it!). However, if you simply ignore a player’s request for a contract negotiation, and don’t make any offer at all, the task will be delegated to one of your less-skilled advisors. They will make a bid for the player, for a short contract period, but at a wage that is likely to be a good way higher than any you would have offered. Once this is done, the player will have a far better position to bargain from in future offers, and you might find it hard to keep him on a decent wage, if you so decide to. So, the always make some sort of bid for EVERY player who is up for wages negotiation, even if you intend to sell him off to the non-league, or another club, on the same session. By not doing so, you risk him being offered by the computer a high-rate, lucrative deal that is just more money down the drain.

Judicious bidding should mean that your players never get down to zero weeks and ask for a transfer, but this can and does happen, usually through managerial incompetence. There are times when a player can prove completely intractable, and no offer you make him will be accepted, his drive to be away from the club overriding even the best of offers you make. This doesn’t happen often, but it can be a factor that hits your side, so be wary. As you have four attempts to arrange a contract with each player a certain degree of experimentation is possible.

You can use this opportunity to gauge the effects of offering longer contracts or less money to certain players. Every time you make an offer to the player, you will be given his reaction upon your next turn sheet. By experience and common sense, you should be able to judge what offer a player might accept, if he refuses your current one. There are two factors to consider in any offer; how the player judged the terms, and how close you were to getting him to accept a good deal. The first column, under the heading `Terms were’ will let you know if the offer was a good or bad one for the player concerned. If you are getting told that it was `very good’, then the player might well accept the same offer again next time, if it rates as `An insult!’, then you should be thinking again! The column headed `Negotiation’ is merely how good/poor the computer considers your offer. For example, if you end up paying a low level player a very high wage for a long period of time, expect the comment to be suitably derisory, or rate up amongst the `excellent’ judgment for the opposite end of things.

Players whose contracts expire (their Contract Length reduces to zero) and who fit certain criteria, are either placed in the next available Auction, or are simply sold to the non-league. For the former to happen, the player must either be at skill level FIVE or above(this level will gradually rise during the season though), or be an APP or SBY. The latter fate is reserved for all players over the age of 18 who are rated at skill levels below five. For players put into the auction, a reserve price of what they would fetch from the non-league is generated, and then all you can do is wait and see what you get for him. If a club buys him, you will receive whatever money is paid for him (this will be at least what he would fetch from the non-league), otherwise he will be sold to the non-league anyway, and you will be given his basic value. The best thing to do if this happens is to be pragmatic, shrug your shoulders and use the cash to good effect when looking for a replacement player.

Also, for those managers that think it feasible to keep over half their side ready to negotiate contracts at all times, by never offering terms for longer than four or five weeks, there is a detrimental factor - player security. If a player is currently under contract negotiation, he is less likely to play in a settled manner, his mind perhaps being on other things. For a single player this factor is very minor, but if a manager is foolish enough to have virtually all his first choice players awaiting negotiation of acceptable terms, he might find that his teams cohesion is somewhat lacking. For the first week or two of negotiations, and player might just be a little edgy, but when he is down to the last couple of weeks of his contract, he begins to think more about his future than he does of his job in hand. If you play him in your games, be prepared for him perhaps not coming up to scratch, as his mind is clouded by worries. Sound like the real world to you?

A player waiting for a listing in the next auction will be on a provisional wage of his Base Wage (as calculated above) or his current wage, whichever is the highest.

Note the following points…

It helps us enormously if you can bid for your contracts in the same manner they appear on your squad sheet, i.e. the lowest squad number through to the highest number (and across the turn sheet and not down in columns). This is how they appear on the computer when we input your side, and mistakes sometimes get made if you bid for them in a spurious order.

See also…