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Club finances
Hi All,

Recently started playing Itsagoal and i am in the position where i have 500k left in the bank and within two games I will be in a negative bank balance.

Whats happens at this point and how do i move forward?

Thanks

Welcome to the game finances are tricky, possibly the most important and difficult thing when you're starting out.

In short, I think if you go into the red you will be sacked. There may be a grace period for you to turn it round, I'm not sure how long.

What was your loss last season? How much did you spend on transfers? Your two big levers are ticket sales and wages - maximise one and minimise the other.

It looks like you made some significant player purchases and increased your stadium capacity - while these are important in the long run you might have been better waiting to make sure your finances were stable. You might want to look at selling one or two of your better young players to give yourself some working capital while you stabilise. Malgieri might be a good shout. Players aren't just footballers, they're also assets and unfortunately lower ranked clubs do often have to sell their better young players to move forward. Once you get your youth academy rolling you will have a source of players who will either fill your squad or can be sold.

Also think about having a squad appropriate for your level. You don't need more than a handful of 70-rated players to walk the lower leagues, and the more higher rated players you have, the higher your wage bill will be.

The first couple of seasons at a club can be tough but you can do it

This is a little overdramatic, because you don't get sacked for being in the red. It does mean you are unable to sign players until you get back into the black, so your only source of new players will be the youth academy, and if your squad reaches 15 players or less you are only given a week to sort it out or you do then get sacked. So being in the red forever puts you in a perilous position should your squad size start to dwindle as your older players retire.

The rest of chyper's post is good advice though.

Very few first-time players succeed at their first clubs unless they actively seek out advice from others, so don't worry too much. Use it as a learning experience and you will do better going forwards.

You can always apply for a new club at any time through the Vacancies in the Manager tab if you wish to do so, even if you get sacked.

A good general rule for a new manager to follow is to make sure your daily wage bill is less than half what you're making in ticket receipts from your home matches. So in your case, a sustainable daily wage bill at the moment is somewhere around 130k per day. Unfortunately you're currently significantly above that, and while you can save money by renegotiating contracts with your players and offering a lower daily wage in exchange for other benefits, and there are tricks you can do to save money here, I think you're still going to struggle to get below 130k a day even with perfect negotiation skills. You may have to take a hit by selling one or two of your highest earners (and you'll make some money up front as well by doing so) in order to become financially stable.

You will lose some performance on the pitch by doing this, but honestly you don't need an amazing team to win the 4th tier divisions, which are mostly full of weak caretaker teams. You have at least 3 seasons to prepare for the real test which is when you get promoted to the top tier. If you arrive with your finances in the red and your squad getting smaller and older, you will quickly discover the step up in challenge is massive and your club will struggle significantly.

Good luck- always happy to help with any specific questions you may have.

Some of us have always had a healthy bank balance so have never encountered this issue

But FS is right, you're asking the right questions and you've not invested too much time into this club to stop you from switching to another one, this time better armed.

Thank you for the replies!

So this means I won?t be sack, I can ride it out in the negative for a few weeks whilst I sell a few players to get back on track?

I?ve grown attached to my club haha.

Some of us played the previous version of the game as their first time on IAG, and are fully aware of how horribly difficult it is to recover from a poor financial start to running their first club.

I even remember being so proud of my only two 70-rated players, strikers Kostka and Latvala (nearly 20 years later, I might add) who scored so many goals and were so hard to maintain financially.

And this was back when there were 8 tiers to climb through instead of 5...

Very much so. Before you sell, make sure you get a good idea of what the values of your players are by constantly checking which players are selling for what values. See if you can work out what makes a player more valuable. You don't want to undersell when you list them.

Bear in mind that some of your players may also have a sell-on clause in their contract, so you might not get the full amount you sell them for.

I think without knowing the knowledge of fixed attributes on players and their approximate market values, alongside the contract trick to keep players wages as low as possible, this game would be very difficult, especially for a new manager who hasn't delved deep into historic forum posts

In a nutshell, fixed attributes determine the value of players and how much potential they have to be trained up (not including the loyalty attribute) if young and all +90s fixed attributes they are approximately 40million in value,,, +80s fixed attributes are approx 15-20million when trained up and +70s are about 10million if trained up.... These are just approximate figures and can slightly vary and the rating of your coaches also determine how far and how fast you can train them up

As for the contract trick,,, you can get a player to sign a contract without using a signing on fee and a playing match fee for the lowest possible wage by using a 30% yearly wage increase clause,,,, the only downside to this is every season after 56 days you will need to re-negotiate the players contract at any given time 56 days after the player signed the previous contract

Hope this helps,,, have a gooden

The idea is not to spoon feed the information, Kane. We had to work it out for ourselves from various cryptic clues on the forums. The joy of learning something new about the game is taken away when someone just gives it all to you on a plate.

Obviously many managers don't read the forums which is why many come and go so fast after destroying their club through impatience and ignorance lol but I didn't know we were a Gnostic Secret Society withholding knowledge from the masses lol, yes it's all hidden somewhere deep in the annals of the forum

Well, there's a difference between gentle hints to point someone in the right direction and saying "this is exactly how you win at the game".

Up until a while ago, giving advice on how to run your club in the forums was not just discouraged, it was outright not allowed. The idea was to let people learn from their mistakes. However this rule was relaxed to help new players who would otherwise have quit the game.

I didn't get given instructions on how to run my club, I worked it out for myself over time and through careful reading of cryptic hints on the forums and the help files. I would have actually found it considerably less rewarding to have everything given to me from Day 1 instead of working it out myself. I'm sure you have a similar experience, although you have benefitted from the relaxation of the rule about forum advice. But I don't believe that anyone ever told you exactly what the best way to play is. You still had to work these things out for yourself as well.

If you teach everyone to play the game perfectly, it'll be a pretty dull game, after all- it will take all the skill out of it.

Yes very true, it was a mixture of luck, gentle hints, lots of reading aswell as good observation skills which helped me

I didn't realise it was a frowned upon thing or even not allowed in the past versions to be open about certain things,, I'll be more subtle in the future

Quite apart from anything else, it does not make sense for you to share every secret you know about the game openly with everyone. Why give away for free the advantages you've gained through trial and error (and often expense)? I know I've got a few secrets that I keep only to myself about the game...

But more importantly, there's nothing more satisfying in the game than working out something for yourself and seeing what a difference it makes to your team. I for one was extremely pleased with myself when I worked out how to negotiate low-daily-wage contracts. Nobody told me how to do it, although I was told to try offering other things to persuade a player that it's a good deal for them. These subtle hints pointing someone in the right direction without outright giving them the answer is the art of a good mentor, in my opinion.

I think in there defence anybody joining the game find it a difficult game,
so any Hints/Tips keeps them interested in the game so keeps them playing instead of leaving this is a good thing considering the low numbers now playing.
Just my 2 cents on the subject.

If new players get anything 'for free' it should be the knowledge that board objectives don't matter, that your managerial contract will automatically renew and will always be 1k/day... simple things that take away the unnecessary stress that this game likes to impose.

I'd also argue that they should get some indication of the staff levels - that higher quality staff can get more from players etc, and that there are certain club rating levels that must be achieved to get those better staff. That whole system is extremely opaque to new players but is enough of an open secret to the rest of us.

And if I was feeling really generous, I'd suggest a health warning about how easy the lower leagues are compared to the top ones, and how you should use the 3-4 seasons you spend trouncing caretaker teams preparing for the real challenge.

This all relies on new players actually reading the help files though.

One other thing - the fact that after a club reset, players get put on very low wages so a season in you'll be getting a nasty surprise when they come up for renewal.

Maybe one day I'll write all this down in a coherent way and who knows, it might be useful

To be clear, I don't think there's any harm at all in being helpful. For things that are cut and dry (like items in the Help Files) then there's no harm at all in giving them the information outright or at least pointing them in the right direction. I'm talking more about the things the game makes you work out for yourself, things like the best way to negotiate, which players are going to train up and which are not, how to optimise your training regimes, when and where to spend money at various stages of your club growth.

We can still help with these sorts of things, but don't just tell them the best way to do it.

Don't think it will make much difference to the top teams either way as they are so well
established anyway. In my opinion its to keep the game alive and boost numbers and get more people playing if they take the Hints/Tips well good for them. I tried to give a guy help he turned his nose up he is now in Div 3 promoting players 35-40 FA from Academy going nowhere in the game how long will he stay

We all know what the majority of Generation Z is like, they need to be spoon fed and have instant gratification otherwise they'll soon find candycrush or similar games,, they've got the attention span of a gold fish on steroids

Iam generation Z myself I think?? Anyways pardon me if I insulted any gold fish